Moments in Two Very Blessed Lives - Don and Laura

Making Memories

2010-08-14T08:35:00.008-06:00

It has been a tough 12 months. I lost both my grandfathers and one grandmother over the past year and while their deaths were not totally unexpected, they were emotional nonetheless. My family gave me the honor of asking me to write the obituaries of my grandparents and give the eulogies for my granddad Harold and my grandma Mildred Claunch. As I watched my once strong grandparents grow weak as their lives wound down and even more as wrote the obituaries and eulogies I came to realize what a profound impact they had had on me. My parents were very young when I was born and that gave me the extreme privilege of having my grandparents for 50 years (and I still have one grandmother left alive). Many do not ever know their grandparents but I not only knew mine, they were some of my best friends and they live on in me.

But all things change: we all are born, live and die and the roles of generations past are picked up by the new generations. This is certainly the case in my life.

Laura and I were very young parents too and as a result our grandsons are also recipients of the extreme privilege of having their grandparents in their lives. I do not say this in any arrogant fashion as I am nothing special and I am sure my grandparents never thought they were anything special either. But one thing I know is there is a unique relationship between grandparents and grandchildren that is far different than the parent/child relationship or any other. I cannot really explain it, but I can say my grandsons have become my best friends, just as I was to my grandparents. I just now hope I can adequately fill the role I have had passed on to me, at least as well as my grandparents filled their roles.

Last weekend I became acutely aware of my role, the unique relationship I spoke of and how I will have a profound impact on a new generation. My second grandson Ethan had asked me to take him camping to Deer Creek not far from Casper and he did not want anyone else to go. “Just you and me, Papa.” So, we loaded the tent, camping gear, some food and water and off to the mountains we went. For me it was a bittersweet weekend in the mountains as we went to the same place I used to camp with my grandparents. I shed some tears as the memories of my childhood years with my grandparents returned but I also participated in a bond that was strengthened between Ethan and me that can never be broken. As Laura said, “You didn’t go camping, you spent the weekend making memories.”

We fished, walked, talked, hiked, caught snakes and bugs, slept in a tent and warmed ourselves in the cool mountain morning by a huge campfire. We hiked for miles with Ethan on my shoulders as he explained to me his wonderful view saying “there sure is a lot of nature here.” He asked me to explain things we saw and what kind of animal had left the poop we came across in the forest. He asked me to teach him how to cast a fly and he asked me to show him how to whittle a stick with a pocket knife. He scolded me for killing a bee that had landed on him and we chased and caught the bright orange butterflies that seemed to be everywhere. I turned over hundreds of rocks for him in his search for a new strange bug. He told me that when his new baby brother Brodie got bigger we would have to take him there so he could “see all this nature.” Now these are not things that will ever change the course of the long history of humans on earth, but they are the things that I received from my grandparents and they have affected the course of my life. I am sure they will affect the course of Ethan’s.

I don’t think my grandparents ever considered their role as any huge responsibility. I don’t think mine is either. But I did come to the realization while fly fishing on a small Wyoming stream last weekend that my grandsons are sponges soaking up everything I say and do and with that I do have a huge responsibility as my actions will have a life-long impact on these young souls. On that same stream I received affirmation that I am doing a fairly good job in this role that has been handed down to me when Ethan said to me, out of the blue, “Papa, you’re my best friend.”

In Loving Memory of my Grandfather, Ralph Mathisen

2010-07-28T16:43:00.003-06:00

[I was honored to be asked by my family to write the obituary for my grandfather Ralph Mathisen who passed away on July 24, 2010.]

Ralph Mathisen

Ralph Andrew Mathisen passed away peacefully on the evening of July 24, 2010 at the age of 88. At his request there will be no services. Cremation has taken place under the direction of Newcomer Funeral Home of Casper and burial will be at a later date at the Oregon Trail Veterans Cemetery in Casper.

The proud son of Norwegian immigrants, Ralph was born July 11, 1922 in Casper, WY to Joseph and Hannah (Lothe) Mathisen. One of three sons, Ralph was raised in Casper and graduated from Natrona County High School. On June 8, 1941 he married Carleyn (Jeanne) Hopkins, his high school sweetheart, and began a marriage that would last 69 years. Shortly after their marriage Ralph enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and served his country while remaining in the states, stationed at what is now Edwards Air Force Base on the Mojave Desert in California. After his discharge in 1943 he, Jeanne, and their growing family moved from Casper to live for a time in Mojave, then moved to El Monte, California, and eventually returned to their home in Casper. They bought the family home in the Mountain View Subdivision and lived there for over 60 years.

Ralph was a master craftsman and life-long member of the Carpenter’s Union. While he built many large structures in California and across Wyoming, he was also a fine cabinet maker, and his cabinet work remains in many places and in the hands of various family members. He worked for various construction companies including L.D. Leisinger and Rognstad-Olsen where he was the superintendent on many jobs. Some of Ralph’s larger projects included the first large smoke stack on the Dave Johnston Power Plant in Glenrock, the bridges on the highway through the Hoback Canyon, and numerous schools and office buildings. He had a work ethic second to none and was always on the job by 6 a.m., regardless of weather, and firmly believed that when it was time to pour concrete the entire team worked on the job from the superintendent on down. He passed that same work ethic down to all of his children.

Ralph was an avid boater and water skier. He built his first powerboat while in high school in the 1930’s. He always claimed to be the first person to ski on Alcova Lake, and pulled his home-built wooden boat cross-country to Alcova before any roads existed. He was one of the first presidents of the Casper Ski Club and built the first ski jump at the club. He was a pioneer on Alcova Lake and owned two cabin lots at Alcova; at one time he held lot number one, eventually trading for lot 32 where he built the small two room cabin that became the destination of choice for him, Jeanne, and the rest of the family for years to come. He taught his children, their spouses, his grandchildren, and many others how to water ski behind another boat he built in 1954 – a boat that remains as sound and solid today as the day it was finished. He taught his children, grandchildren and others how to have a great time at the lake, complete with a huge steak barbecue at the end of a long day of fun. He was also fond of music and dancing and would not hesitate to carry Jeanne across the dance floor when a good tune was played.

After his retirement in the 70’s Ralph and Jeanne spent many days on the road in their motor home with their family dogs for company. He became an avid CB radio operator using the handle “Lightning Rod” and made many new friends with his hobby. Throughout his CB years and many successive years later, he and his CB buddies met twice a week, on Wednesdays and on Saturdays (which included his son and fellow CB’er, Ron), for breakfast at either Hardees, McDonald’s, or one of the many local truck stops. Ralph’s favorite holiday gifts during those times were the booklets of fast food gift certificates he got. This tradition lasted nearly 20 years.

Retirement, however, did not deter him from working, as he was always busy helping build something new with his sons and grandsons. Many porches, garages, decks, and cabinets are presently at the homes of his family members due to his hard work, love, and dedication to his family. He believed a man should always build things that last and his work will live for decades beyond his passing. He kept his carpenter shop heated with wood he cut and split until his last days, and he was always ready to help when someone stopped by needing some wood cut, or advice on a project, or to borrow a tool.

Ralph is survived by his loving wife Jeanne of Casper, daughter Kim Browning and her husband Don of Casper, son Ron Mathisen and his wife Karel of Casper, son Tim Mathisen and his wife Mickey of Fallon, NV, and son Tom Mathisen and his wife Judy of Kaycee, WY. He is also survived by: grandchildren Don Claunch and David Browning of Casper; Dori Claunch of Denver, CO; Danae Stampfli of Cheyenne, WY; Ron and Tom Mathisen of Carlisle, IN; Sheri Daugherty of Casper; Shane Mathisen of Las Vegas, NV; Corey Mathisen of Fallon, NV; Misty Parker of Dubuque, IA; Bodie Mathisen of Kaycee, WY; 12 great grandchildren and 4 great-great grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his parents, his brothers Joe and John Mathisen, and by his granddaughter Darla Claunch. The family would like to thank Life Care Center of Casper who took such good care of him in his last days. Memorials to the Casper Humane Society would be appreciated by the family.

In Loving Memory of Harold Claunch, My Grandfather

2010-07-08T16:30:00.003-06:00

[I was honored to be asked by my family to give this eulogy for my grandfather Harold Claunch who passed away on July 3,2010. It was delivered at his memorial service on July 8, 2010 in Casper, WY.]

You know I had several months to prepare what I was going to say today but I never got around to it. I guess I just thought my granddad was such a fixture in my life that I would never be standing here honoring him one last time. So I only had a few days to think about what to say to honor my Granddad Harold “Hal” Claunch and I came to the realization I would have no problem filling the time allotted this morning as he left all of us here today, and countless thousands that moved across dance floors over a period that covered eight decades, with plenty to remember him by. My next thought was how to tackle this. Should I just speak in a chronological order, or do I approach this talking about specific topics? The length of time was just short of 94 years, eighty of which were spent entertaining others with his music. The major topic list was rather short but could fill volumes: his love for my Grandma Mildred Claunch, his music, fishing, sports and good food. And as I began to put my thoughts together I came to the realization that my granddad was a combination of some good and influential people – part Benny Goodman, the great clarinetist; part Robert Young from Father Knows Best; part Eroll Flynn with his dashing good looks; part George Blanda the old Oakland Raider; part Sesame Street’s Cookie Monster and lastly part (and no small part I might add) Archie Bunker. So bear with me on this as I try to put this all together.

So, it was on July 21, 1916 my Granddad was born in the small farming community of Orlando, OK, the third child to Joe and Bessie Claunch. He spent his childhood years on the farm and in his dad’s businesses and in 1920 they moved to Hunter where Granddad grew up, played sports and fell in love twice with loves that lasted for his entire life. His first love was music (which we will talk about a lot this morning) and the second was a young lady named Mildred Walker who became my grandmother.

Granddad excelled at sports, especially football and he talked about playing football until his last days. My sister Dori somehow retrieved his high school championship football trophy a few years back and I think he was more proud of that than most anything. He must have been a pretty good football player according to what was said about him in the local paper. One article reads “Fleet footed Claunch scores only touchdown in second quarter.” and another reads, “The first tally came in the third period when Claunch, speedy Hunter back, intercepted a Pond Creek pass and raced over the goal line.” Now most of us knew my granddad for a long time but I am sure none of us ever thought of him as “fleet footed” or “speedy.” In fact we all knew him as “flat footed” and “hungry”! I also think he may have been injury prone as one article blames a Hunter loss on the loss of Claunch, their star quarterback. Written in the margin in my grandma’s handwriting are the words, “was knocked out.” In another article we read he had missed four games because of a broken shoulder! But then, as now, a student had to meet academic requirements to play sports and the honest truth is granddad was no scholar or bookworm. In fact, he would have been plenty happy his entire life playing ball, playing his horns and chasing Mildred Walker. He managed to graduate from Hunter High School but I suspect he really only had eight years of education. But my grandma had 16 years of education in the Hunter, OK public schools: 12 of her own and an extra 4 that she earned doing granddad’s homework and studies for him. But this is not to say he was not a smart man since he did manage to catch and marry Mildred and his knowledge of playing the clarinet, sax and flute was beyond compare.

But when I talk about his knowledge of music I am not speaking of text book knowledge. Some good young musicians go to college to study music but not my granddad. He would never have gone to college to study music – he wanted to play music and he never was concerned about the proper names of chord progressions or other such technicalities, he just wanted and loved to play. He learned early by playing with the black Dixie Jazz musicians and later learned to read music in school. He could play solos and improvise better than most, an art that is in some sense gone now from modern music. He had little tolerance for “average” musicians and always thought if they really wanted to learn how to play they would have practiced more as he did – sometimes practicing in his rocking chair while watching a football game. Once when playing one of the Big Band shows, he stood up to play a solo on his tenor and began stomping his foot very hard and loud while he played. When he was done with the set I asked him about it and he said he was trying to get the band back on tempo as the director couldn’t direct and the drummer they had couldn’t keep time if his life depended on it. He came off the stand on another performance cussing the alto player who was not playing anything near what was on the chart and commented that the alto man couldn’t tell bullshit from apple butter – his way of saying he couldn’t read music very well. My granddad really believed in the statement, “those who can play, play and those who can’t, teach.” He was a way-above average musician and he had no problems criticizing those who weren’t. But he was the ultimate professional musician. Yes, his music was top notch pro, but he did what was needed to rid the band of mediocre musicians. Like the time around 70 years ago that he played in a band and the tenor sax man next to him was mediocre at best. Night after night Granddad filled the bell of this guy’s sax with cigarette ashes until it stunk so bad the rest of the band thought that tenor man had not bathed in quite awhile. The man paid so little attention to his horn that it never got cleaned or wiped down and the ashes, butts and moisture turned into a stinking sludge. Of course not taking care of your horn was a cardinal sin in my Granddad’s eyes. But as you can see I have gotten a bit off the chronological time track here.

Someone once said, “If you love what you do, you won't work a day in your life” and that was true of my granddad and his music. He began playing his horns when he was a teen-ager. His Mother played mandolin and organ, his Dad fiddle, his sister piano and sax and his brother trumpet. He played music all through high school playing barn and club dances and in traveling tent shows. He even played in the Hunter High Marching Band which made for interesting football games since at half time he would have to dash off the field, change into his band uniform, play the half time show only do dash off the field again to change back into his pads for the second half. His knack for soloing was already showing in his high school years. At a music competition where he auditioned the saxophone he won the competition and received good or excellent marks in all categories, however some now unknown judge wrote in the bottom margin, “Taking liberties with the written composition did not add any marks to your score.” Taking liberties with the composition? That is what he called music and the composition was there only as a guideline, as far as he was concerned. I am sure he thought that judge didn’t know bullshit from apple butter.

It was shortly after high school that he journeyed to Pampa, TX and played with a band there while Mildred finished school and actually started what turned out to be a short stint in college. We have a collection of letters he sent to Grandma from Pampa expressing his love for her and begging her to basically elope to Pampa to marry him. Unfortunately we do not have her return letters to him, but somehow she agree and went to meet him in Texas and on February 4, 1937 Harold married Mildred in Pampa, TX, a marriage that would last 72 ½ years until my Grandma passed last August. The Hunter paper reported the wedding and I read the entire article:

A wedding of much interest was that of Miss Mildred Walker daughter of Mr. and Mrs. T.J. Walker of Hunter and Mr. Harold Claunch son of Mr. and Mrs. J.E. Claunch also of Hunter which took place at six o'clock Thursday evening February 4 at the Christian church in Pampa, Texas. The marriage vows were read by Rev. Mullins in the presence of Mrs. Joe Claunch and Arlo Claunch. Both of these young people are graduates of Hunter high school and both attended Northwestern State teachers College in Alva [This is incorrect as my granddad never attended college]. Harold is now employed with an orchestra; a group he has been with some time. Immediately after the ceremony a wedding dinner was served at which members of the orchestra and Mrs. Fern Moman and son Randolph were additional guests. The couple is now living in Pampa but plan to leave soon with the orchestra on an extensive tour of the Western states.

Written in the margin of this announcement in my grandma’s handwriting, it reads:

After all the telephone calls I finally accepted. What a day – running to a broadcast, the doctor's office and then the courthouse. Arlo finally found us a minister. The ceremony wasn't read and the usual words said, but such a beautiful outlook in the future we were given. We weren’t nervous much. Harold said “yes” and Randolph, only seven, said it should have been “I do”. We had a lovely dinner and what a night. First, afraid you’d be shot at the club and then who was the guy who put the darning needle in the mattress for you? We got each other and may the future be happy and each year may our love grow deeper. With all my heart I love you Harold, now your wife. Mildred.

As I said it was 1937 and he was playing with the Billy Hunter band in Pampa, Texas. The band was making arrangements to go to Tokyo, Japan for an extended hotel engagement. That was when he decided to get married and make the trip a honeymoon. He got the necessary pictures, papers, ID's for passports and it was at the time when the money exchange was getting questionable and just prior to the war so the trip did not materialize. (It was not until 50 years later that our newlyweds finally traveled outside the United States.) My grandma traveled with him as he played jobs in Texas and Albuquerque. It was then that the band booked a gig in Casper, Wyoming. Now, remember this was 1937 and all my granddad had ever heard about Casper was how cold it was so he decided to leave the band and return to Oklahoma. Now isn’t it odd he and my grandma had the chance to travel to and live in Casper as early as 1937? They actually did not move here until 1954. So, our newlyweds moved back to Oklahoma and my granddad traveled with a local band through Kansas, Missouri, Texas and Louisiana. But, he got tired of traveling with the bands, so what did he do? He grabbed his brother Arlo and his friend Carlisle Schnitzer and headed out to see what was happening in music in California. Tired of traveling so you decide to travel some more. Makes sense to me. Grandma soon followed him there and he went to work in downtown Los Angeles, joined the musician’s union and played with small musical groups in Santa Barbara, Ventura, Balboa and Palm Springs. He then scored bigger jobs with several big name groups traveling the West Coast: Eddie Miller, Wingy Manone, and the Big Jazz Band within the Bob Wills Orchestra. He talked to his parents in Oklahoma, a conversation that ended up being published in the local paper that explained that he had achieved one of his life long dreams. The article reads:

Harold Claunch last week called from Los Angeles to inform his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Claunch, that he had recently achieved one of his highest ambitions: that of being on a radio show. With the Phil Harris Orchestra he will be on the Jack Benny program on Sunday evenings over NBC.

He also did some studio work working for RKO, Republic and Warner Brothers and if you watch the classic movies channels late at night you may see him in a movie from the 30s or 40s. The muscian’s union rules were strict at that time and they said that no one could be shown on screen playing an instrument unless they were a member of the union, or they had to be a headline actor. Then, as it is now, the music was not actually played on the set, but was recorded in a studio and dubbed in (he also played these studio sessions). Because of the union rule and the fact the music was not really played during filming my granddad got extra work and he can be seen in these movies playing stand up bass, or guitar or the harp, all instruments he did not know how to play and sometimes dancing and sometimes singing, neither of which he knew how to do. But he got these stand-in parts not only because he was in the union and could hold the instrument on the set but because he was very handsome and had a full head of very dark hair.

It as during these years in Los Angeles that he came to be known as Hal. In Los Angeles at that time the largest newspaper was the Los Angles Herald and on all street corners were paper boys hollering “Herald” as they tried to sell their papers and I guess he got tired of thinking people were calling for him all the time so he decided his given name of Harold had to go. So, in the music world he became known as Hal, and stuck with him the rest of his life.

He often talked about those days in Los Angeles and he and I talked about them just a few weeks ago. He was very proud of his work there and he was especially proud of his work in a movie called Tahiti Honey, a wartime film shot in 1943. He also talked about how they did not have much in those days but I always got the sense they were so much in love with each other and so much in love with the music it did not make any difference. He liked to tell a story about playing in Los Angeles for tips and those at the club would toss tips into a Roi Tan box on the bandstand that the band would split after the night was done. He would get done playing in the wee hours and take his share of the tips, stop at an all night grocer and head home where grandma would cook steaks and salad bought with the tips he earned for the night. He said he would make 50 or 75 cents a night but it was enough to buy two huge steaks and all the fresh vegetables needed for a big salad and the newlyweds would eat a feast at 2:00 in the morning and he always said they were the best meals they ever had. Since this was late depression times and into the war years there was not much available and he said he always thought the steaks were horse meat but I doubt that was true.

But by this time he had two children in school, and music business was difficult unless you were available to travel, be on the road playing one night stands and away from home weeks at a time. With encouragement from his parents he decided to go back to Oklahoma where his parents owned a John Deere dealership and go to work for them. I often wonder what would have happened if they had stayed in Los Angeles. With his musical talent and striking good looks (and all that hair!) he may have become a star and if so I bet the name change from Harold to Hal would have been minor as Claunch just does not have the ring of Bogart, Stewart, Ford, Tracy or Cooper. But then I would not be here today speaking at his memorial and, well you get the idea.

Back in Hunter he could never find wrenches that fit his hands the way a clarinet or sax did and he was always cautious of damaging his fingers thus creating a disability and not being able to play his horns. So, he went to work in Enid, Oklahoma for a music company and also organized the Hal Carlyle Orchestra with his long time friend Carlisle Schnitzer who played drums. For the next 6 years he played the clubs and various hotels in the Enid area. He played with many big names over the years and even started the careers of many including a young piano player he hired in Enid named Charlie Rich who became a huge country and western star in the 70s and 80s. Yep, my Granddad gave Charlie his start in professional music.

In 1954 my grandparents came to Casper but I never really understood why. Granddad told me they moved here because the fishing was so good. Apparently the Schnitzers had moved here and they came to Wyoming to visit and the fishing was so good they decided to move. I am not sure if this is the real story but it is the one he told me. But if fishing was the reason, the music did not stop. He went to work at the Beacon Club, which at that time was a dinner club and not the cowboy bar it is known as today. I have to comment on my Granddad’s thoughts on Country Western music. My Granddad played for Bob Wills who was one of the pioneers of Western music with his Texas Swing but my granddad cussed those, in his words, “awful steel guitar players who couldn’t stay on key because they didn’t know shit from shinola.” But I digress. In 1955 he went to work at the Post Office and retired from there in 1977. During this twenty some years at the post office he was also playing his horns at various Casper clubs: the Country Club, Viking, Avalon, Colonial and the Riverside. He played in every Shrine Big Band since its initial appearance. He made the remark before playing in the New Year in 1994 he thought that was his 62nd consecutive New Years. Now I know he played additional New Years after that with Johnny Latham and Stan Icenogle up at the Colonial so it is highly possible that he played nearly 70 consecutive New Years. Grandma used to tell him he could not get out of one year into the next unless he played "Auld Lang Syne" for it would certainly upset his routine. However, each year he said it would probably be his last year since people just did not celebrate New Years the way they used to and he would say he would just stay home in his rocker in front of the TV but then on New Year’s eve he would be packing up his horns to go out and play. I bet he didn’t need a chart to play “Auld Lang Syne” and I am sure he took some liberties with the composition.

There was always music in the house, even at night to go to sleep by and in the morning to listen to while reading the paper. His ears never did get accustomed to silence. He even practiced his horns while watching TV often times the volume annoying other family members. In the early 90s my dad, me, Laura, my sister Dori and my Aunt and Uncle, Lee Ann and Rick, packed up and drove to Enid for a Claunch family reunion. During the reunion potluck he drug out his clarinet and started playing with one of the other Claunch family members, a woman who played piano – I forget her name. Then to everyone’s surprise Arlo came up with his trumpet. Arlo had played with granddad for years in Texas, California and Oklahoma but had not played in decades. The three played together that day one last time and, frankly, Arlo’s playing sounded terrible as he had no lip but they played anyway and I had never before and never since seen my granddad smile so big at this last chance to play with his brother. And with a big smile he turned to Arlo and said, “You sound like hell.” Like I said he thought musicians should practice.

Now I mentioned that the legend is they moved to Wyoming to fish and fish they did. Over the years they had a couple campers which were primitive by today’s standards. No lights except from the truck battery and they were afraid to run those for fear of running the battery down. No bathroom facilities and only a tiny sink with a small water tank that could be drawn by a small hand pump in the camper. It is hard to estimate how many nights they slept in that camper and I was with them often being the oldest grandchild who was inseparable from his grandparents. We traveled the state in that truck and camper and grandma always had lots of good food. She would prepare stew, or spaghetti and for some reason lots of beans beforehand and we would eat that in the camper after a long day of fishing. Then it would be time for bed and lights out. I can still remember sleeping in the small cab over part of the camper and them cramming somehow onto the bed that folded out over the table. As many of you remember my granddad was a big man – about 240 pounds – but he and grandma somehow slept comfortable in that tiny space. When we would go camping he had this ritual he followed. First he would find a place to park and then find various rocks to drive onto to level the camper. Then the next step in the ritual was crucial: he had to mount the outside antenna. The reason for this was because he always had to have his music and during dinner and after bed he would turn on a transistor radio he had and begin scanning the AM band for something to listen to. After dark we would lay in bed as he turned the knob on that radio, many times cussing because all he could find were Mexican stations playing Mexican music, but he had his music nonetheless and he would make some comment like, “boy those Mexicans all play in the same key, but they sure can hold a rhythm.” Then he would turn it off and it was time for sleep but on many nights I would feel the entire camper start to shake gently then I would realize it was granddad’s silent laughing shaking the camper and then grandma would say something like “Stop that Harold” and I knew he was just broke wind. Without trying to sound crude, he was really proud of his ability to do that and it always brought a hearty laugh from him when he did. As my grandson Ethan (Granddad’s great great grandson) says, “It’s no big deal – everyone farts,” so we might as well talk about it openly. This is why I could never understand why she would bring beans on a fishing trip. There was one time we walked into the Middle Fork canyon and Grandma packed lunches for us which we put in our creels. At lunchtime we had ham sandwiches and split a can of pork and beans. I really don’t need to go into this any further – you get the idea. She would cuss him for it but she was the culprit with her cooking.

He caught a lot of fish over the years and I never knew how much fishing really meant to him until just this past winter. I had gathered all their old photos and scanned them then I found a box of nearly 1000 slides and had them converted to digital too and when we sat down and went through them there were more pictures of fishing than anything else. They both truly loved to fish and loved their camping and loved having friends and family go with them. He was as serious about his fishing as he was about his music. There was a time when we were fishing what is now known as the Miracle Mile above Pathfinder and Granddad was fishing a hole with a big streamer fly and some guy with Colorado plates pulled up across the river and waded right into the hole where Granddad was fishing. “Hey, I’m fishing that hole,” Granddad yelled over to him to which to guy responded with some remark about it being a public river. About five seconds later Granddad laid that streamer fly into the hole, passing by the guy’s left ear and nose, missing by fractions of an inch! The guy hurried up and left knowing the next cast would end up in one of his nostrils.

As I mentioned he was a good athlete in school and his love of sports did not end then. He loved to watch his kids and grandkids in their sports. Now I always thought Nebraska had the most loyal fans, but my Granddad was the staunchest Oklahoma Sooner fan ever and made the Nebraska fans look like amateurs. He followed them through good and bad and always had an explanation when they lost. One time the Sooners lost to Nebraska and he said it was because the Huskers cheated. “How did they cheat?” I asked him to which he answered that the Nebraska home field in Lincoln was built so that the center of the field was about six feet higher than the sidelines so the Nebraska running backs were always running downhill which made them faster and harder to catch. I guess the Nebraska sweeps got the best of the Sooners that day and I asked him why he did not think the Sooners would have the same advantage offense and he answered, “The Sooners would never cheat and take advantage and that is why they ran up the middle all day.” One time the Sooners lost to Notre Dame and Granddad said Notre Dame beat them because they cheated. I asked them how they cheated and he said Notre Dame put that statue of Mary at the end of the field and that intimidate the Sooners. Then it was cheating when Notre Dame had a priest in the locker room before the game to pray for them and that was just not fair. I was not even going to suggest that the Sooners have a prayer before the game….

Granddad loved to eat. There was always good food around and Grandma kept the refrigerator well stocked and she was a great cook. I truly think one of the reasons why they both lived in relative good health for so many years was because they ate well, always had lots of vegetables and fruits and plenty to eat. He loved barbecues, especially ribs and the summers, when he was not fishing or not playing, were spent in the backyard by the grill waiting for a steak or burgers. I know he loved going to Lee Ann’s for prime rib or Thanksgiving dinner and he never turned down an invitation to our house as he loved our cooking. Laura would make her homemade ice cream and when we would give him a bowl he would take a bite and say, “Oh I can’t eat all this – it is much too rich.” Then he would end up eating three of four bowls. Going out to dinner was a treat for them as they remained pretty much financially conservative, probably due to their depression and war years. They seemed to always order fried shrimp when they went out and I know he really enjoyed the prime rib at the Colonial. He told me many times that he always hoped Dick Sedar would give him some prime rib when he played a job up there.

As I mentioned he retired from the Post Office in 1977 and grandma retired in 1984. This allowed them to travel and they spent several winters in California. It was then that he reunited with many musicians he had played with in California a half century earlier and even though he went there with grandma to avoid the Wyoming winter and to play some golf he also went there to play. Many of these so-called senior citizens were playing in small and big bands and he joined right in. He borrowed a baritone sax and played it in one of the big bands in Hemet, CA and in the process made some new musical friends to add to the many he had made there decades ago. He played for free. In fact all through his life he would have played for free – the money was just a bonus. But he thought these musicians were really rather old and that they didn’t practice enough.

After my dad retired and moved back to Casper he became Granddad and Grandma’s travel chaperone and the three of them visited Mexico, England, Scotland and France. They also took two cruises: one to Alaska with Arlo and his wife and the second through the Caribbean and Central America which included a passage through the Panama Canal. He loved Hawaii and they both enjoyed a fishing trip to Minnesota and Canada where they caught some really big fish. But truthfully I think he was happiest fishing in Wyoming.

But the years caught up him and grandma too so the traveling had to come to an end and the last winters were spent in the family home on Hanway here in Casper. He still played when he could and always seemed to be welcome to go and play with Stan and Johnny and he blew his horns in the house and even in the garage. He got to where he would only play his tenor sax because he thought he could not completely cover the holes in his clarinet and he thought it squeaked and sounded bad. To me it sounded just fine, but to him, the perfectionist with ears trained over eight decades it was terrible. Then finally his sax got too heavy for him and he laid down his horns for good about two years ago. He took care of grandma in her last years with the only love that could be stronger than his love of music. They had over 72 years together in an adventure that took them across the United States, to foreign lands and doing things many of us only dream of. But I have to tell you, he was still sharp as could be. Just a few weeks ago I visited him at the nursing home and we had given him a digital picture frame and I loaded all of his old photos on it for him. As the photos changed he could still tell me the names of every band and every band member that showed up on the frame and even when and where the picture was taken. But then one picture of a band came up and he asked, “Donnie, do you know who that piano man is?” “No, Granddad,” I replied, “I sure don’t.” “Well, he answered, I can’t remember his name either but I remember he couldn’t play worth a shit.”

We saw his last smile a week before he died when my son brought his new son, Brodie Joshua Claunch, only one week old, to see Granddad. We had told Granddad about the birth and that there was a new member of the 5th living generation of Claunch’s and he asked about the baby repeatedly. As Donnie held Brodie up to for Granddad to see that morning, his eyes sparkled once more and he smiled.

If during the years you have enjoyed his music and he has entertained you he has accomplished his mission. No one received more enjoyment from anything than Hal Claunch received from his music. So, he always said when his time was up he did not want it to be an emotional, mournful goodbye. He said it should be like the Southern Folks singing and bidding farewell marching to and from the cemetery. So, celebrate his life, listen to the music, as he plays his final farewell to all of us and, Granddad, thanks for the memories, the music and the journey.

Of all the stories I heard from Granddad and Grandma over the years I never heard that they danced together. I assume they didn’t because he was always on the bandstand and in their early years she was on the bandstand with him playing piano and singing. But I suspect the Good Lord gave him a break from playing in the Heavenly Big Band so they can have one long dance together on that eternal dance floor.

On behalf of the rest of the family I would like to thank my Dad, TJ Claunch and my Aunt Lee Ann Thurston who took care of Granddad and Grandma the past couple years as the years caught up to them. And thanks to my dad who visited Granddad every day this past year since Grandma left us. He took Granddad cookies and grapes and he was always well stocked. The ladies that worked with him at the nursing home came to call him the “Cookie Monster.” Dad, I know Granddad always looked forward to your visits and he always remembered them. To all of you, thanks for coming today and for dancing to my granddad’s music over the past eight decades. Please join us at the Shrine Club immediately following our service here for lunch – as Granddad would want it there will be plenty of good food - and to share in the memories of my Granddad.

In Loving Memory of Mildred Claunch, My Grandmother

2010-07-08T16:05:00.003-06:00

[I was honored to be asked by my family to give this eulogy for my grandmother Mildred Claunch who passed away on August 16,2009. It was delivered at my Grandmother's memorial service on August 21, 2009 in Casper, WY.]

Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Don Claunch from here in Casper and I am Mildred’s oldest grandson and also her favorite….just kidding Ricky. I need to ask you a favor and realize that as we visit today and talk about Mildred I will call her grandma as that is what she always was to me. Likewise, when I speak of my grandfather Harold I will use granddad which is all we ever knew him by. And so let me begin by welcoming you all in the same words my grandma would have said, “Howdy do!”

We can only speculate what kind of a day it was in the small town of Hunter, Oklahoma the day before Thanksgiving – November 27, 1918. It was on that day that Thomas “Johnson” Walker and his young wife Nellie brought their first daughter into the world. That baby girl became my grandma and lived a wonderful and full life of 90 years. Born in the Walker home, the descendant of a long line of sturdy, hard working people of Scottish descent, she lived all of her childhood years in the same home in the small town of Hunter. Over the years the Walkers added four more daughters to the family.

Now let me pause here a moment and let’s take a look at this situation. It is 1927 and we have Thomas Johnson Walker, a very hard working man who was by this time well respected in the community of Hunter and at the age of 30, in his home with his loving wife and four daughters. Now our family (both sides including the Walkers and the Claunch’s) are blessed with great genes that give us long and healthy lives and as a result I knew my great grandfather very well and I saw him work hard in his blacksmith shop in Hunter, sweating with the heat of the summer and the forge. He worked long, hard hours and I always attributed that to his heritage and work ethic, but I sometimes wonder if there was some other reason he spent so much time in his shop. Now, let’s see…30 years old with five women in the house….well, you figure it out. In any event my grandma loved and admired her dad and I remember her watching him while he worked with smile that showed how proud she was of him.

Anyway, I got a little off track there as this is supposed to by about my grandma. As I was saying the Walker home was alive with four daughters and in 1934 when grandma was 15 tragedy struck the Walker household. It seems there was a young classmate of Wanda Lee’s, then age 11 who invented some device from a rubber band that shot paper clips and Wanda Lee became the target. A paperclip struck her in the calf and a few days later she died from blood poisoning caused by the wound. Grandma never spoke of her sister or this tragedy.

Grandma continued her early years in Hunter where she attended school and worked in the drug store her aunt owned making malts and pulling sodas at the fountain. In school she was a straight-A student and in high school she fell in love with her sweetheart Harold Claunch who quickly recognized how smart she was so he asked her to do his schoolwork for him - which she did. As a result my granddad graduated from high school and she graduated top of her class in 1936. We all know grandma was really smart, but it was not until I was going through some of her old diaries and such that I found that she was given two full college scholarships. She was offered a scholarship in Business at a college in Chillicothe, MO and another at a teacher’s college in Oklahoma. But she never took advantage of either as she had other plans.

It was 1937 and grandma was taking some college classes after high school and busily keeping up her correspondence with my granddad who had graduated a couple years ahead of her and had taken up with a traveling band and was working in Pampa Texas. The band he was with had landed a gig in Tokyo, Japan of all places so the young lovers had a plan. They would get married and travel with the band as a honeymoon while granddad worked in Tokyo. They did all the necessary paperwork, got the necessary pictures taken for their passports and were married in Pampa, Texas on February 4, 1937. Grandma sent a telegram home that day that simply said, “Was married at six in the Christian Church. Mildred Harold.” And so they began their marriage which lasted 72 ½ years. They never made it to Tokyo as the exchange rate and the threat of war in Asia canceled the trip.

After living in several places grandma settled with her new husband in the Los Angeles area where my dad was born. Later grandma gave birth to a daughter they named Marilyn who died in infancy. As with other family tragedies, she never spoke a word of this.

Grandma’s life in California continued with my granddad working in the music business and in 1944 my aunt Lee Ann was born in Hollywood. I am sure grandma was growing tired of the music scene which meant late nights and granddad on the road and so forth so she began to venture out on her own. She took her children on the bus or train to museums or on other outings. She was truly her father’s daughter: a strong willed individual, independent and determined to take control of the situation.

It was during this time that some good, but unexpected news came from Oklahoma. Nellie was expecting and grandma soon had a new sister as the 5th Walker daughter, Suellen was born in 1941. As things worked out this meant that my dad’s aunt is actually younger than he is and 23 years separated my grandma and her youngest sister.

But the music life was wearing on them so the family moved back to Oklahoma after the war where grandma took care of the family home and raised my dad and my aunt. She was also involved in the music business and she played the piano and sang in the bands.

In 1954 the family packed it up and moved to Casper for reasons I do not know. They lived in the garage of family friend Carlisle Schnitzer for a time until grandma found a home for sale at 2359 Hanway where the family settled and where she and my granddad lived until 2009 when they moved to the Shepherd of the Valley Care facility. Granddad always told me they still would have been living in Schnitzer’s garage if it weren’t for grandma who found the home, made an offer and bought it all without granddad’s knowing or assistance. I tell you, you have to love that independence and go-get-‘em!

Grandma spent the next 55 years in Casper. They took frequent trips back home to Hunter and while she always called Hunter home, I think she really came to know Casper as home. Grandma kept the family home, raised my dad and aunt and worked for a number of Casper businesses primarily in retail lumber. In 1984 she retired from the Builders Mart in Casper after 17 years with that company where she worked for Howard Starck who, along with his wife Lori, became life long friends. She once told me that Howard always took good care of her as an employee because he knew that she saved him much more in making sure the books were right than it ever cost him to do something extra for her. I don’t think she was being arrogant about this kind of statement, she just simply knew it was true! I remember those days when she worked in the lumber yard, years before computers tracked everything, and I always knew how smart she was but it really became apparent when I saw how fast she could compute the cost of a load of lumber using a price per board foot – all in her head, with no calculator or adding machine.

But grandma’s life was not about work. Work for her was a means to an end and that end for many years was fishing. She loved to fish and there were countless weekends when she and my granddad spent the weekend in their small camper on the bank of some stream, river or lake, fishing to their heart’s content. And she was a great angler. She could handle a fly rod better than most and had no problem wading hip deep into the Miracle Mile with a creel, her vest and her spinning rod. She walked in and out of Outlaw and Deer Creek Canyons numerous times and fished the Wind River extensively. She was rarely skunked and in many instances caught more than granddad or my dad or even me. Being the oldest grandchild I was very fortunate in that I was able to go fishing with them a lot and spend many nights in that old camper. Now let me point out that these weren’t your ordinary camping trips. No, even though she and granddad were out in the wild they did not camp as such. The camper was small and sat on the back of their old Chevy pickup. It had no bathroom or electricity other that the truck battery, a gas stove, gas lamp and a tiny sink with a small handle type pump for water. But this simple set up did not mean things would be done in a crude or bad manner. No, grandma always had great meals of spaghetti and meatballs, stew, chicken and noodles or some other great meal, hot and ready at the end of a long day fishing. She planned ahead by making these meals at home and freezing them in milk cartons for fishing trips. In the morning there would be, at a minimum, cereal, fruit, toast, juice and coffee and on many occasions she would have eggs, bacon and toast, all deliciously made on that small stove and all cleaned up in that tiny sink. At night we would crawl into bed, grandma in her good pajamas – it did not matter we were out in the wild – and she and granddad would find some far away AM radio station on the transistor radio that played some quiet music and we would sleep soundly only to do it all over again the next day. In her later years walking the streams became too much but that did not stop her from fishing and she spent many a day with my granddad and my dad on the banks of Pathfinder, relaxing in a lawn chair, just waiting for something to bite. In reality she was not the typical fisherman as I never once heard her tell a big fish story.

As I mentioned, grandma was a very good cook. We all looked forward to when we could go to her house for dinner. The best things to eat were these that she cooked: baked apples, macaroni and cheese, lemon cake and home made ice cream. She also always made her own homemade noodles and the best date cookies in the world. My wife Laura says, “I don't think she ever gave me the complete recipes, she always left out one little ingredient and I even told her last Sunday as she was drifting away and I was holding her hand and talking to her!!! She got the last laugh on that one I think....” She could create wonderful meals, all cooked in the style she learned at a young age cooking for farmers and hard working people. There would be meat, potatoes and gravy, three or four vegetables and fruit. But there was one meal she made that seemed to be everyone’s favorite: her barbecues. Everyone loved going to grandma’s for barbecues and on the surface there was nothing fancy as it was usually hamburgers and hot dogs. However, she always made her home made cole slaw and macaroni and cheese and many times had a freezer of homemade ice cream with bananas in it. Her slaw was the best ever and she took no short cuts by buying the pre-shredded cabbage. She hand shredded it herself and made her own dressing. She gave me the recipe once but I could never make it taste the same, so I think she was slipping something in and not telling anyone. Her macaroni and cheese was to die for and she always made a large pan and there were rarely leftovers. She never shared that recipe and sadly it went with her to eternity. Her barbecue dinners also always included Fritos and she always warmed the buns in the skillet because she said “you can’t put a warm hamburger on a cold bun”. At Christmas she would make date cookies and once again we tried her recipe and could never, ever get them to taste right. We will miss those cookies, that is for sure. She always made sure that she had "a God's good plenty" so everyone had enough to eat. She herself also liked to eat and food that she loved wasn't “good” it was "larapin." Whatever the heck that was! But, sadly as the years added on, her desire for food faded but she had plenty of encouragement from her then 4 year old great-great grandson Ethan who would sit with her at lunch on the days he and Laura would care for her and say, “Grandma, you need to eat your sandwich, you can’t just eat your chips and watermelon.”

I mentioned a bit ago that grandma wore her good pajamas all the time, even when camping. You see, grandma was always very proper but not in any snooty way. She just always believed that she must dress nicely, be polite and mind her manners. Her hair was always done and her clothes perfect but she never lost that charm that comes from growing up in a southern farming town as she always greeted everyone with a smile and a friendly, “Howdy do!” For some odd reason, however, she loved my granddad beyond measure, although he could be very improper at times. At the risk of sounding crude, I must tell you how dinners, especially barbecues, usually ended at her house. After we all stuffed ourselves on grandma’s cooking she, with the help of some of the other ladies would start cleaning up in the kitchen while granddad would swing in his porch swing that was just outside the kitchen window, visiting with the rest of the men. Then, to put it mildly he would break wind and start laughing at himself to the point his swing would bounce up and down. “Harold,” we would hear from the kitchen, “I heard that and you need to stop.” which only encouraged him more. I remember watching her at the kitchen sink just shaking her head while he sat in the swing farting and laughing. I am not sure what irritated her more, the fact that he would break wind very loudly and openly or the fact that he thought he was so funny.

She was remarkably simple. She never collected things and was not one to go shopping and spend a lot of money. On the day she retired, January 11, 1984 all she wrote in her journal was, “retired today from Builder’s Mart.” I would think that day deserved at least a short novel. The things she did buy she protected and guarded as pure treasure. She would put her outdoor potted plants in the shed at night to protect them which probably came from her youth when hail did so much damage to crops. She loved to babysit our little dog Muffy but worried that she wouldn't eat her food. So she would cook her rice and give her table scraps and when Muffy had finished those she would look at grandma with sad puppy dog eyes so grandma would make her more rice and table scraps and then she would vomit from eating too much people food. Then grandma would worry she was sick so she would make her more rice and the whole cycle would start again. She loved to write and receive letters and wrote in her journal. I have an entire box of her journals that will keep us entertained for years to come. Her idea of entertainment was equally simple. She would make popcorn on Sunday afternoons when our kids were little and sit with them and watch sports on TV. Our kids would get so excited about this they would ride their bikes down to grandmas just to share some popcorn and a ballgame.

After her retirement she took up golf and was a member of the Casper Women's Golf Club. Everyone knew grandma to be a strong woman, physically, emotionally and mentally, but it may surprise you to know that the night before a day she was scheduled to play golf she would not sleep. Just thinking about it made her so nervous she lay awake all night, but she still loved the game.

Retirement also brought travel into her life. She and my granddad spent several winters in California after she retired and it was there she became reacquainted with friends they made there during the war and made many new friends. She played some golf there but was always concerned with how expensive it was. After my dad retired and moved back to Casper he became grandma and granddad’s travel chaperone and the three of them visited Mexico, England, Scotland and France. Grandma loved England and Scotland but detested France saying the people there were mean and rude. They also took two cruises: one to Alaska and the second through the Caribbean and Central America which included a passage through the Panama Canal which she thoroughly enjoyed. She would speak of their passage through the canal often and I think she grew up at a time when that canal was still one of the greatest of all engineering feats and it impressed her greatly. She was also very fond of Hawaii and enjoyed a fishing trip to Minnesota and Canada. But truthfully I think she was happiest fishing in Wyoming.

In the mid 80s grandma was diagnosed with breast cancer and being the strong woman that she was she had her surgery and moved on with life. She never complained and never expressed any great fear about it. It was simply a bump in the road that she had to drive over and get on with it. The night she received the call from the doctor that her biopsy was malignant and that she was having surgery the next day, my wife Laura and I were at her house and I told her I would let dad and Lee Ann know but she said not to worry that there was no reason to tell them. It was then that I realized that grandma not only did not want to worry others about things, but that she was truly a very private person. She never had spoken of the sister and baby she had lost years ago and after her breast cancer she never spoke of it again either. The cancer never returned – she beat it, as we all knew she would.

As the years caught up with her and she had to slow down she spent her last years in the family home on Hanway with my dad and my aunt caring for her. In April of this year they moved to the Shepherd of the Valley care center where the nurses and aids cared for her up until the Lord sent an angel for her last Sunday night. She passed very quietly and peacefully with my granddad and others there with her. She had lived an incredibly full and rich life and it was now time to rest.

Please join me in a prayer. Most high and glorious God, we come to you today in thanksgiving for the life of my grandmother Mildred Claunch. We thank you for the many years we had with her, the many blessings that came from her and the lives we all live because of her. We thank you for the years of great food, great fishing, great love and great times. We also thank you for those times that made us stronger, such as when she was so tested with breast cancer and most recently Alzheimer’s. Heavenly father, we ask that you welcome our loving wife, mother and grandmother into your eternal kingdom where she rests with you and your love for all time. Comfort those of us who mourn our loss and bless the very youngest of those who followed her – her great and great-great grandchildren. Finally, Father, we ask your blessing on all who called my grandma friend and may the memories of her always sweeten their lives as her life was sweetened by her loving friends. We know she rests with you now and that you are here with us in your spirit and ever lasting love. In Christ’s name, amen.

On behalf of the rest of the family I would like to thank my dad T.J. Claunch and my aunt Lee Ann Thurston who lived with grandma and took such good care of her the past year and a half. Also, our biggest thanks to my Granddad Harold Claunch who married grandma, loved her his whole life and took such good care of her the past couple years when the Alzheimer’s took her over. On behalf of all the family I extend my thanks to all of you who loved and were dear friends to my grandma over the 90 years she spent here on the good earth.

Finally, we ask you to stay a while if you wish and visit with all of us who are so proud to be able to call Mildred Claunch wife, mom, grandma, great grandma and great-great grandma. Then, we ask you to join us for a reception and refreshments at the Shrine Hall on 39th street behind the Sunrise Shopping Center. Thank you for coming and I wish you a very pleasant day.

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2010-03-28T16:32:00.001-06:00

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My Hero

2009-05-10T15:58:00.007-06:00

I suppose to some degree we all have a hero. We have always thought that our heroes are those who do things we are incapable of doing but I don’t think this is the correct way of thinking about a hero. It seems to me to be more correct to say that our heroes are those who do things we are unwilling to do. For instance, we may hold firefighters as heroes when they rush into a burning building to save the lives of people they don’t know. It is not that we are incapable of doing this, just unwilling, and thank God we have people who are willing to do a variety of things for the rest of us.

In thinking about heroes in this way I have now realized I have a new hero. He is the one who willingly does the things I am unwilling to do, or at least do only with much trepidation. He does not run into burning buildings nor does he risk his life in anything he does. But he does more than you can imagine for others. He goes freely to the nursing home to see my grandparents. He is patient with them and makes them laugh. He is kind and gentle with all the nursing home residents, gladly giving hugs and telling them how nice it is to see them. These are all things I have a very difficult time with. I have written about my struggles with my grandparents in the nursing home here and I really struggle when it comes to dealing with the other residents, many of which are suffering from various levels of dementia, a litany of physical problems and no future to look forward to. I just don’t know how to interact with them, but my hero does. I believe that our aging population is becoming some of our modern day lepers where only a few care for them and only these same few are not terrified of the entire thing. Going to the nursing home is one of the most unnerving things I do, not only because of the fact I am seeing my once strong grandparents fade away but because of everything associated with the nursing home. St. Francis of Assisi cared for the lepers with joy and love and I am no St. Francis.

My hero would make a good St. Francis. The problem he has right now is that he is only five years old. I am speaking of my grandson Ethan Joseph Claunch. He is the last Claunch in our branch of the family and he and I and my father share middle names and Ethan and I both share that name with my great grandfathers (his great-great-great grandfathers) Joseph Earl Claunch and Joseph Andrew Mathisen. Ethan goes to the nursing home with Laura and visits not only his great-great grandparents but all the residents. Just yesterday when we went to see my Claunch grandparents he spent some time in the day room giving hugs to handful of women residents who just grinned and glowed at the attention they were getting from this young man. He hugged grandma and tried to talk to her without getting the least bit frustrated as she was completely out of it and would not respond to anyone or anything. Granddad got two hugs which brought a huge smile to his 93 year old, very tired face. The day before he went and visited my Mathisen grandparents and had Pop laughing out loud. While grandma was not quite sure who he was or who he belonged to, his visit seemed to calm her and make her very happy. He eats popcorn and ice cream with them in the ice cream parlor that is open each day at the home and then tells me that he cannot beleive that they give away free popcorn and ice cream. Visiting them is not at all tedious, but remarkably simple.

Ethan with his Great-Great Grandparents

When Ethan visits the nursing home he only sees people. He does not see old people or sick people with dementia or that death is hiding in every corner of the place. He only sees people. I just cannot see it this way no matter how hard I try. He is my hero.

Jesus had much to say about all this. In Matthew’s gospel he told his disciples: “I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” And in the gospel of Mark He said, “’Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.’ Then he embraced them and blessed them, placing his hands on them.” There is something great to be learned here. Ethan (as well as all children) is the example of how we grown-ups should be. He accepts people as people without the biases we adults have. He does not see pain, suffering and aging, but just another one of God’s creation for him to be fascinated with and to freely hug without reservation.

Ethan Making Pop Laugh Out Loud

The sad thing is that we adults spend all our time teaching children the correct way and we never pause to learn from these little ones. I am learning from Ethan, but I have many years of bad learning to undo. No, he does not rush into burning buildings, but he goes where I fear to tread and I thank God I have such a good teacher who shows me my fears are really nothing and they are only standing in the way of me getting some last, few precious days with my grandparents.

Don

One Man's Search for Meaning

2009-04-16T14:28:00.005-06:00

It was a year ago this week that I died. I, better than most, should understand that there should be no fear of what lies ahead and I do understand that. But I still struggle spiritually as I watch my aging grandparents, all four of which are now in nursing homes to spend their remaining days. My struggle is not about them coming to the end of their lives, but in the suffering that comes with it.

My parents were very young when I was born. As a result I was able to know my grandparents and do things with them the average person never does. I fished, water-skied, hunted, drank whisky, traveled, built buildings, smoked cigars, chewed tobacco, played music, cooked and practically lived with my grandparents. I learned to fly fish from my Granddad Claunch. I learned carpentry from my grandfather “Pop”. I learned about surgery from my Grandma Jeanne and cooking from Grandma Mildred Claunch. I inherited my love of music from Granddad, my taste for whisky from Pop, my brains from both of my grandmas. I watched in awe at the things they did: my Granddad handle a fly rod or a clarinet; Pop build the most beautiful things of wood. My Granddad was the artist and Pop was the strong man. Grandad played clarinet, sax and flute flawlessly and beautifully. Pop actually picked up a pack horse once by getting under it, putting his shoulders under its belly and squatting the beast off the ground. They were my grandparents, they were my heroes, and they were my friends.

Three weeks ago my Grandma Jeanne fell and broke her hip. She has been in the nursing home since and will probably never leave. She has Alzheimer’s, or at least bad dementia. She cannot remember what happened this morning. She wants to go home to be with her dogs and with Pop. She cannot walk. She cannot go home.

Pop has been at home since Grandma Jeanne went to the hospital and nursing home. My uncles have been taking care of him. He falls repeatedly and finally ended up in the hospital this week with a blood clot in his head. He is going to the nursing home today. The man that once squatted a horse cannot remain upright, can barely walk and is incapable of caring for himself. He wants to go home. He cannot.

My Granddad and Grandma Mildred entered the nursing home yesterday. Grandma has Alzheimer’s and has no idea what is going on. She wanders off thinking she is going to go see her sister that has been dead for twenty years. She got out of the house two weeks ago and my aunt found her in a snow drift. Now she wears an ankle bracelet that sets off an alarm if she tries to get out of the nursing home. Granddad falls a lot. He can no longer play his horns or go fishing. He lived in the same house with Grandma for 55 years and he said leaving there yesterday to go to the nursing home was sure a helluva way to leave his home. Laura and my aunt cried as they took them to the car. He will never return home.

For five years I was on the Ethics Committee at the hospital where I work. We talked at every meeting about end-of-life issues and the ethical questions that surround this. The talks were easy and the cases we studied in preparation for those times when we would actually be called to make an ethical decision for a patient or family were also easy. It was all so easy. Now it is not and I struggle.

I just don’t understand the suffering. I know in my heart there is redemptive value in suffering, but I have never seen it happen to my heroes before. In a weird coincidence (or maybe due to Divine direction) I am presently reading Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning and in that book he makes the great case that there is meaning in all suffering. I cannot find the meaning in the present situation. My friend Jennifer sent this quote by Mother Angelica: "Holiness is simple. Holiness is doing God's Will in the Present Moment. That's it. Holiness consists of four words: THE WILL OF GOD. Honey, if it's happening, it's God's Will." I know this is God’s will, I just want to know why. I understand all the theological thinking and teaching surrounding all this, but this is personal.

Last night when I got home Ethan was there. He helped me cook up a big pot of chili to have today since we knew it was going to snow. (He loves to help his Papa do anything.) As we worked in the kitchen he suddenly asked, "Nini and Papa, when you get old and die who will live in this house?" Laura and I glanced at each other both wondering where this came from. Laura told him that some nice people would live here. He then asked, "What does heaven look like?" More glances between us as Laura told him that only those who have died and some very special people who God has allowed a peek into heaven knew what it looked like. I asked him why he was asking about this and he replied very matter-of-factly, "Oh, I know about all this. I just wanted to find out what you know about it." I asked, "You know all about this?" To which he replied, "Yep," and off he went to play. Even our five year old grandson is searching for meaning. I know angels talk to him.

This spiritual crisis of mine will pass. I have a wife who is my best friend who loves me with an immeasurable strength and I have my good friends like Jennifer who sent me the quote from Mother Angelica and Ron who offered his time to talk and Ellen who works in hospice and has been a life-long friend. I may never fully understand, but my search for meaning continues.

Don

Bitching

2009-03-01T12:20:00.001-07:00

At the hospital where I work those of us in senior leadership do rounds each quarter where we deliver snacks and goodies to all the departments of the hospital. A couple of us team up each quarter to go in at night and do night rounds and the night staff is generally appreciative of senior leaders showing up on their units during the late hours. Two weeks ago my friend Dick, who is one of my fellow leaders at the hospital, and I did the night rounds for Valentines and delivered Valentines cookies and drinks to the staff. Dick is not only my co-worker but a dear friend and we share the same faith and attend the same church.

While doing the night rounds two weeks ago, Dick and I were waiting for the elevator to take us to another floor when we saw a gentleman we both recognized. He is a former hospital employee that we had not seen in some time and we greeted each other and asked how he was doing. He told us it had been a tough day and that he had his wife in the hospital and they had just made the decision to move her to hospice. This quite surprised me as this gentleman is not much older than I and I was immediately struck with the realization that he was moving his wife to a place to spend her last days.

Dick and I responded to his news with condolences but it was apparent neither of us knew quite what to say. Dick told him we would remember him and his wife in our prayers for which he thanked us and we turned to enter the elevator which had just arrived on the floor. Once in the elevator Dick and I caught one another’s glance and we both knew we did not have to say anything as we were both feeling the same thing. After a second or two Dick said, “I think God just sent me a very strong message. I am done complaining.” I agreed with him and our brief conversation in the short elevator ride centered on the fact that we really had nothing to complain about. We had just seen a man about our same age who was now facing the eminent death of his wife. I cried on the way home that night.

This morning at mass we heard a wonderful and very powerful sermon by Fr. Ray Rodriquez who is the Vocation Director for our diocese. In this position his duties include recruiting men to enter the priesthood as well as serving as the pastor for some smaller churches in southeast Wyoming. While his sermon today was primarily geared toward his recruiting duties, it included a very powerful story of a young mother who called him this past Christmas morning. She asked Fr. Rodriguez if he could go to the hospital that day and see her husband who had woken with pain in his ear and had been admitted to the hospital which kept him from attending Christmas day mass. Fourteen days later on the Feast of the Epiphany this man died leaving his loving wife, a twelve, ten and eight year old children. Father Ray went on to talk about how in his time working with the widow for funeral arrangements she had asked him if, as a priest, he ever had doubts about his faith. He told her that even after fifteen years as a priest he had to admit that he did, but the power of God’s love always pulled him through.

For the second time in two weeks I had gotten slapped with the news of someone else’s terrible loss. I cried through the rest of mass.

Newspaper columnist Molly Ivins once wrote, “I've known some great bitchers in my time. With some it's a passion, with others an art.” I think I have raised my bitching to nearly an art form. Dick called it complaining and if the term bitching offends you, I offer an apology, but I will continue to use that word as, for me, it more deeply expresses what a lot of us have turned into.

Since my encounter with the man in the hospital and now reinforced by the story I heard from Fr. Ray this morning, I can honestly say bitching has reached a fever pitch in America. Yes, times are a little tough, the economy is a train wreck and the uncertainty in the world is very hard to understand and accept. But the bottom line is we are still a very rich and blessed nation. In the facts I have seen quoted in my reading on the marriage of Warren Buffet’s fortune with the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation there are over 4 billion souls on this planet (three quarters of the world’s population) that lives on a dollar a day. Yes – one buck a day, but with all the safety nets, social programs and assistance available in this country, and also with the fact that 93 percent of the work force remains employed we continue to bitch.

Significant portions of the world’s population are starving needlessly each day and we bitch because McDonalds took a few minutes too long to get us our Big Mac.

Significant portions of the world’s population does not have access to clean drinking water but we bitch that the 500ml bottle of purified water we just paid a buck for out of a vending machine is not cold enough.

Significant portions of the world’s population live under dictators or other oppressive regimes but we bitch because our man did not get elected, failing to realize we are blessed to have the privilege to vote.

A man I know is saying goodbye to his wife and three kids not far from here have lost their father, but I bitch about almost everything.

I agree with Dick, God has sent a message. I am richly blessed, well fed, well loved, healthy and with a loving wife who is sitting next to me as I write this. I purposely gave you only the second half of the Molly Ivins quote above; the entire quote is, “Whatever you do, don't give up. Because all you can do once you've given up is bitch. I've known some great bitchers in my time. With some it's a passion, with others an art.” I am done giving up. I am done bitching.

Don

Dead Man Blogging

2008-07-14T12:22:00.003-06:00

Many of you know about my “episode” where I lost consciousness and spent a short time in the hospital as a result. But only Laura knows the whole story and after a lot of reflection I have decided to share the hidden part. I must admit doing this causes me some uneasiness and even fear of being labeled a nut, but I think that whatever happened to me needs to be shared for others to learn and gain hope from it.

I start at the beginning….

It was about 8:00 on a Sunday evening, April 13, 2008. Laura and I were watching a Robin Williams comedy and she had just dished us a bowl of ice cream. It was a quiet night together and the weekend had been uneventful. I remember eating my ice cream and then the next thing I see is Laura standing over me with the phone to her ear and a look of complete horror on her face. I asked her who she was talking to and it only took me a few seconds to realize she was on the phone with the 911 operator saying I was now back and talking.

I told her to hang up asking why she was calling them and she explained that I had suddenly gone unconscious, my head falling back on the couch and that the paramedics were on the way. I told her to tell them to turn around, that I was fine and I did not need any help. They came anyway.

When they arrived I was perfectly fine except for a very rapid heart rate. My EKG was normal. The paramedics began asking Laura what had happened and she explained how I was there, and then I was gone. She said she yelled at me to get me to “wake up” and when she checked she found I was not breathing and had no pulse. She then pounded on my chest and yelled at me, “Don’t you die on me!” and I remained unresponsive. She did not know how long I had been out when she first noticed me but knew it was about 1 ½ minutes from the time she called 911 and I suddenly returned. I just came back, according to Laura, as if nothing had happened. I had probably been gone 2 or 3 minutes.

I told the paramedics I was fine and that I did not want an ambulance ride to the hospital. I told them I would not go to the hospital as all was good but it was then that I heard the voice of Weldon Cooke who is a registered nurse I have worked with at the hospital for years. He had come in the ambulance and had been standing behind me and when I heard his voice I asked if that was Weldon and he said yes and we shook hands. He told me he thought I should go to the Emergency Room and get checked out since what happened to me was serious. I trust Weldon completely, so we declined the ambulance ride and Laura drove me to the ER.

To make a long story short they checked me out completely in the ER and during my brief inpatient stay and could find nothing wrong with me other than my rapid heart rate. It never dropped below about 110 the entire time I was in the hospital. I had a complete cardio work up including a stress test and nuclear studies of my heart. I had a complete neurological workup including an EEG and CT scans of my head. I had a complete medical work up. Everything was negative and normal expect the CT of my head showed a sinus infection which I already knew I had. There was and is no medical reason for this episode – it remains unexplained.

The most difficult part of my recovery, if I can even say I had a recovery since I felt just fine, was dealing with the emotional part of what had happened. I had died and with this comes some emotional turmoil that is hard to handle. I have a very loving family and a wife who loves me completely and with their help and the help of Fr. Lucas from our church I weathered the storm. Actually, I came out of it with a new appreciation of my life and the delicacy of all life. But then a few weeks later I had a setback of sorts and spun down into a depression unlike any other. I could not shake it. I did not want to deal with the crap of daily living, especially the hassles of my job. Laura finally let me have it and told me I needed to get it together. She could not understand how I recovered with a new love of life only to spiral down into the depths of hell we call depression. What was the cause of this sudden, deep depression?

The answer to that is the part of the story only Laura has so far heard. The answer lies in those few minutes I was out, or rather gone.

As soon as I came back that Sunday night I asked Laura why she had done all those things to bring me back (even though they did not work). Over the days and weeks after this episode I would ask her the same thing. I never really consciously knew why I was asking her but I asked anyway. It has only been the past few weeks that I have sorted this all out and now know why I asked her that question and why I became so depressed: I wanted to go back to that place I had been for those few minutes. That is the answer.

I remember what happened while I was gone although I purposely have left it out when I have told the story since it happened. There is no other way to say this, but I went to heaven. I have struggled with the words to explain this as it is beyond description or explanation but I will give it my best shot. The first thing that struck me is that Laura’s mother was there for me. It was not in the sense that she was their in the physical body she had when alive, but she was the first to greet me, and to confirm this she was cooking for me. She had always loved me and my big appetite and the way I loved her cooking, so it is no surprise to me that she was there doing what she loved best. In fact, she was frying chicken for me and to this moment I can remember that smell. There is nothing like it on earth and I will forever crave that fried chicken she was preparing for me.

Where I was cannot be explained in any earthy terms. I suppose one would ask if I saw the “bright light” that others have reported. Well, no, not really, but what I saw was a complete absence of darkness, if this makes sense. The difference is subtle. What accompanied it was a complete feeling of peace, a peace which I find hard to explain. Imagine the most peaceful and relaxed time you have ever had and multiply it a million times and you just begin to approach the experience. Finally, the absence of dark and the complete peace was all wrapped up in complete and total love. This is the only way I can explain this third part of the heaven I experienced as there are no other words I can use.

I did not have the sense of having a physical body, but as soon as I arrived I knew I must move on toward something else. While I had time to be greeted by my mother in law, know she was there to prepare a welcome for me, smell that wonderful smell, and be able to see all in complete peace and love there was nothing more given to me during my brief visit. I started to move as I knew I must but then I was back looking in the face of my terrified wife and asking her why she had done what she could to bring me back. I wanted to see what I was moving toward but that was not granted to me.

I am no longer asking why Laura tried to bring me back and I am no longer in that deep depression. The lesson for me in all this has been that I need to experience and enjoy this life to its fullest, even in the hard times and in those parts that are not all that fun. Further, I now fully know and understand that a large part of what we are here to do during our brief stay on earth is to ease the pain, sorrows and sufferings of our sisters and brothers and to strive to help all those in need. We will never be able to eliminate all this from earth, but we need to do everything to mitigate it knowing that there is a promise that awaits us and a place where all things come together in eternal peace. I know now that the place where I was going when I suddenly came back to Laura was into the presence of God Himself where to simply gaze at his face cures all ills. Call it entering the Pearly Gates or whatever, it does not matter to me as I know it exists and it exists in a way that is beyond our comprehension.

I remember the words of Julian of Norwich during a time when she asked God how all things could be well given all the bad in the world. God’s response to her was: “I make all things well, and I can make all things well, and I shall make all things well, and I will make all things well; and you will see for yourself that every kind of thing will be well.” Julian closed this passage saying, “And in these words God wishes us to be enclosed in rest and peace.” Yes, there is a lot wrong in the world, but there is also a lot right and it is up to us to make more right.

I have read a lot in the past about near death experiences including a non-religious book studying the existence of guardian angels. Some physicians and other scientists have tried to pass off near death experiences as hallucinations or other thoughts brought on in the brain undergoing fast and rapid change. Their research is incorrect. I know what I experienced and until one can experience it themselves they cannot know the truth. If you want to say my oxygen starved brain made me hallucinate or that the bats in my belfry have gotten a little stirred up that is fine. I can only say I know what I know is the truth and that is all that matters.

We are all richly blessed. We are blessed with life itself regardless of its difficulties. I am blessed with many things but mostly by my life and my wife Laura who loves me more than anything and wanted me back in a bad way. I can only say to her that she need not fear and to repeat Julian of Norwich, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

Don

Words I am Sick of

2008-02-21T14:27:00.001-07:00

OK, I have had a belly full. There are just some words and short phrases that I do not want to hear anymore and now it is my turn to shout back.

I do not want to hear one more time how I have to reduce my carbon footprint. What the hell is that anyway? And even if this is something concrete, how do they measure the size of my footprint? I was doing alright with hearing about this until last night driving home from work NPR had some eco-loony on trying to explain the size of the carbon footprint of a jar of peanut butter! Come on, peanut butter? There certainly has to be some larger cause than peanut butter for global warming, assuming global warming is a fact anyway! This guy was even trying to tell me what nation and region my wine purchases should come from to help decrease my own carbon footprint. Apparently it is better for me here in Wyoming to buy and consume California wines as it takes less fuel to get it to me than from other wine producing regions around the globe – DUH! Who came up with this term anyway? I have a feeling it is the same boneheads that rave against the oil companies for trying to find new sources of fuel and these are the first people to scream when the lights go out or when fuel costs drive up the cost of a stamp by a penny or two for them to send in their next welfare application. Carbon footprint? Go ahead, reduce yours to nothing and have fun starving and freezing to death in the dark cave you are moving into.

I am also sick and tired of consultants, business advisors and some (I stress some and not all) MBA graduates who tell me they can help change my processes pronounced with a long E on the last syllable so it sounds like process-ease. Maybe that is their idea to make my processes easier and that is why they use this idiotic pronunciation? I have no problem with process improvement; I have a problem with people who attempt to use the English language to sound like some British aristocrat none of which know diddly Just to show you how moronic using this pronunciation is consider this: if you have one tooth that is abscessed then get another, do you have two abscess-ease, or if a king has one princess daughter and the queen gives birth to another girl, does he now have two princess-ease? I don't think so. The word has always been processes with the last syllable having a short E. Now I admit Webster gives both pronunciations of this word, but it gives the stupid one with the long E second and last, just where it should be. So, if you are going to do business with me and attempt to help me with my processes I will be glad join you. But if you think you are going to do anything with process-ease then take a friggin' hike and go learn to speak like a normal American.

Speaking of business know-it-alls and their language skills, I have a list of terms that I am really sick of that we hear in the business world everyday. Hardly a meeting goes by where we do not hear about outsourcing, paradigms, synergy, partnering, brainstorming, deliverables, facilitation, low hanging fruit, skill sets, thinking outside the box, win-win situations and bandwidth. Who comes up with these words anyway? I am not sure, but I think I know why and there are a couple reasons. First, they are great euphemisms. No one wants to have their deep inner beliefs challenged and possibly changed, so we will force a paradigm shift on them. No boss in the world wants to lay off anyone as it is so much easier to outsource their jobs. Second, these words are borrowed from other disciplines probably because the typical business consultant cannot come up with their own terms just as they cannot find real jobs. I am particularly bothered by the use of the term bandwidth. It is usually heard in a context such as, “We will need to measure this team’s bandwidth,” or something of that sort. Why not just say we are measuring the capacity and capabilities of the team? Beats me. Bandwidth was originally a term used in science and radio to describe a range of frequencies and such but then was co-opted by the computer world to describe a system’s capacity for data transfer. I can live with the computer guys borrowing this word as they actually work in science but the consultants really need to give it back to the ham radio operators and physicists where it belongs.

I am also sick of any word dealing with the presidential race. Take the word caucus. I cannot seem to read anything, see anything on TV or hear anything on the radio these days when this word is not mentioned. I think the problem is that presidential races have become like Christmas in that they start earlier every time. The Christmas season now seems to start sometime around Labor Day and the presidential election race seems to start about two minutes after the end of a presidential inauguration. In other words, the politicians are always campaigning which gives party members all the more reason to caucus which causes this word to be found everywhere. It is driving me nuts. But I do get some satisfaction from the humor of the caucus as it is described by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland. In that story Alice and the animals run a race in a circle for a random length of time and at the end everyone is declared a winner and given a prize. This is just like party caucuses – they run around for some random period and when it is all done everyone is declared a winner and everyone expects to get something, although nothing was really accomplished. Enough of this election verbiage!

I could list a thousand other things I am sick of hearing, but I think you get the idea. I may just be grouchy because this has been a long winter that has kept me cooped up and forced to listen and read more than I should. I am really sure this is it now that I think of it. All I need to get feeling better is some exposure to some words of which I never tire, such as grilled T-bone, cold beer, sandy beaches, hot dogs, barbecue, keg, bikini….

Don

How Lucky Can I Be?

2007-12-24T12:52:00.000-07:00

Tonight I will be spending the 32nd Christmas Eve with the guy I fell in love with all those years ago and married 31 years ago yesterday. We had the best anniversary celebration yesterday that I think we’ve ever had. Jeff, my baby brother, called me last Thursday afternoon and asked what we were doing on Sunday, I told him that we were probably going to go out to dinner but that we weren’t sure yet. I had a sneaking suspicion that he was going to invite us over for dinner but I couldn’t have been more off base, instead, he asked if we’d like to have them up for “one of your killer pot roasts.” I really thought he was yanking my chain so told him no, I really don’t want to do that. Anyway, he proceeded to tell me that he had a surprise for Teresa for Christmas and swore me to secrecy. He had called Teresa’s mom in South Carolina and set it all up for Judy to fly here for Christmas and to surprise Teresa and wanted us to be Santa’s little helpers. Of course, me being the sappy old thing that I am I started crying! We decided that we would have Donnie’s killer prime rib, twice baked potatoes, salad, and corn, nothing fancy but certainly a great dinner. Judy called from the airport at 7:10 AM to let us know that she was “fixin’ to get on the plane.” She touched base a few times throughout the day to let us know where she was and if things were on time. We went to church in the morning, breakfast afterwards with Dad and Rita and home to take a nap but I ended up too excited to nap. Donnie got to work in the computer room putting together some Christmas gifts and I proceeded to just putz around the kitchen, the whole time thinking that I could hardly wait for 4:10 as that was when we got to go pick Judy up at the airport and Jeff and Teresa were coming over at 5. He would come into the kitchen every so often and tell me that I was working way too hard and I had to remind him that I was just piddling, nothing too hard at all. Once when he came in he said to me, “you’re just like your Mama, aren’t you.” Let me tell you, to me that is the greatest compliment I could have ever received, my Mom was the greatest and to be put up a pedestal like that was amazing for me! Will I be seeing my Mom this Christmas, no, but is she right here with me, you bet she is. I’m sure she was right there next to me in the kitchen yesterday telling me to make Jeff’s Christmas surprise special for Teresa and boy was it. The look on Teresa’s face when she spotted her Mom standing in our little kitchen was priceless and I would have done it all 1000 times over to see the love that I saw between that Mother and daughter in our kitchen last evening.

Donnie, thanks for 31 amazing years and thanks for the greatest compliment I’ve ever gotten!

Merry Christmas,
Laura

The Short List

2007-04-21T07:15:00.000-06:00

I have renewed an old friendship recently via the internet and email. One of my high school English teachers, George Kuntzman found my blog and web site and contacted me a couple months back and we have started an email correspondence about our lives since he and I were at Natrona County High School over thirty years ago. About two years ago I wrote here about the bad teachers in my life and why I considered them bad teachers. In that blog posting I closed with:

I did have some truly fine teachers over the years. George Kuntzman, my high school English teacher taught me more about reading, literature and just enjoyment of our language than anyone. And Bob Suedes turned me on to Economics in college. Miss Logan was instrumental in publishing a paper I wrote which she submitted for an anthology the college put together.

When George found this on the internet he wrote and mentioned, “I am glad I made your short list.” I am sure he is as those bad teachers on the long list took some pretty hard punches from me in that piece. I wrote George back and told him that I was probably too hard on them and, having a tendency to focus on negatives, I really should write about those important positives on the short list.

George taught literature and poetry, a very hard topic to teach to a 16 year old with a steady girlfriend (Laura), a job as a disc jockey and a love of playing baseball. English was just one of those fiery hoops that school administrators forced us all to jump through. But for some reason George sparked something in me that stuck for years. I took a “Bible as Literature” class from him only to meet my literature requirement and I can still remember him pointing out nuances and shedding gobs of light on parts of the bible that my years of Sunday school had required me to memorize. However, that same Sunday school failed to teach me that this was literature, teaching me that this was sacred scripture to be taken literally with no room for interpretation – it was the exact words of God and that was just how it was. But in George’s class I realized that these works in the bible were written by real people with real lives, loves, joys and struggles and while the words certainly may have been divinely inspired they showed a very human element in them also.

I remember George reading poetry to the class, some he had written himself. I still struggle with poetry and find it hard to read and even more difficult to understand. But George gave me an appreciation of the art that has always stuck with me. He had (and still has) a passion for poetry, one I will never have, but can appreciate due to him. Thanks George.

Bob Suedes was my first economics professor in college. Now, he was an interesting fellow who did not teach macro economics the way any other person taught it. Nothing from the text was studied, only his lectures counted, many of which lasted only 30 minutes of an hour long class. In his class I never learned the mathematics, graphs and technical aspects of the dismal science. That came later in classes taught by other men. His classes were all theory, much of which I think Bob developed himself and while I probably came out of his class with less than what I needed to earn a degree in economics (which became my major) I did come out of his class with a love of the science and a fairly well developed methodology of how to form theories of economics. To this day I am fascinated with economic theory and still use the skill he taught in many aspects of my life. What was that skill? Simply put it was this: watch what is happening and use your brain. Simple enough. Thanks Bob.

Carolyn Logan taught English at Casper College and I took an early American Literature course from her. It was in her class that I was introduced to the Puritans, Thoreau and Emerson, The Scarlet Letter and Captain Ahab’s uncontrolled hatred. But more than reading these pieces, she made me write about them. At the time I wondered what I had gotten myself into! This stuff was hard enough to read and understand, let alone write about, but write I did. She assigned a book for me to read that contained the earliest works of Louisa May Alcott, many of which were written under a pseudonym. Then, she had me write an essay about it arguing that it was or was not worth being read. I had to read the book twice as it had some stuff in it I struggled with but I survived it and wrote a fairly long essay arguing that others should read it, mainly in a comparison with her most famous work Little Women. To complete my paper I also read Little Women, although it was not part of the assignment. Miss Logan loved my essay and helped me revise and tweak it enough so she could submit it to an annual collection the college published which contained the editor’s picks of the best student work of the year from any and all disciplines. My paper was published and I was thrilled but shocked. And I learned. I learned that I could learn new things from old writings and that if I put my head into what I was reading I could certainly get much more from it. I also learned that what I found in it may not agree with what the next person found, but that this was alright and was, in fact, one of the reasons that people wrote: to stimulate debate and thinking. Thanks Miss Logan.

Looking back it is interesting to see how these three and what they taught all fit together. George taught me how to look for what is there but partially hidden and to appreciate things even if I did not fully understand them. Bob Suedes taught me to use my brain and develop my own ideas about economics and anything else for that matter. Miss Logan taught me to put this all together: find what is hidden and learn from it, develop my own ideas about it then write them down to spur debate and get others thinking. I still do this today.

So, George, there you have it – a little fleshing out of the short list. You and the other two truly were my good – no, great teachers. Your influence on me was stronger than the negative influence that I absorbed from others, but like the things you taught me about literature; it remains somewhat hidden, but always there.

Don

The Dow Drops 3%...Oh my!

2007-02-27T22:15:00.000-07:00

I guess I am grudgingly accepting the fact that I am getting older. There is hardly a day that passes that something does not remind me of this fact. This day was not different.

Anyone who knows me knows that I remain an economist at heart. Yes, I am weird – I love the numbers, the statistics and all the workings of the movement of money. I watch the markets daily – not just the New York Stock Exchange, but the foreign exchanges as well in addition to the commodities and currency markets. They call it the dismal science. I call it pure fascination. They call it filthy lucre, I call it absolute beauty.

Today the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost over 400 points or about 3 percent. This followed a 9 percent drop in the Chinese markets and was followed by drop in the Nikkei stock index of 644.85 points, or 3.56 percent. (The Nikkei is an index of the Tokyo stock exchange.) Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index dropped 3.8 percent, and Australia's index shed 206.9 points, about 3.5 percent. Even tiny New Zealand got in the game as that market fell more than 3 percent. Does this alarm me? Well certainly not as I believe it offers some nice buying opportunities. I remember from graduate school days a quote that was attributed to Bernard Baruch that said something like this: the best time to buy is when there is blood in the streets. Is there blood in the streets today? Perhaps, but it may get worse – they have not broken out the tourniquets yet.

But, I digress. The purpose of this diatribe is not to offer investment advice or comment on the economic situation of the global economy. Rather, it is to reflect on my constant aging. This is becoming more acute as I near the half century mark. So, let me say this, what shocked me most about today’s 400 point Dow decline was this: it was only 3 percent!

More than twenty five years ago I went to work for Paine Webber, at that time a major New York brokerage. For the years I was there the Dow never budged from a range between 950 and 1050. Markets were stagnating and nothing was happening. However, a 400 point drop then would have reduced the net worth of corporate America by 40 percent – not the 3 percent it did today. What is even more amazing is the day the market broke out and went above that 1050-or-so barrier and volume sky rocketed to 60 million shares traded in one day. It was so much that our brokerages shut down early on a Friday to catch up on the counting of this massive volume and try and match the trades that were done. Today’s volume in comparison was 4.6 billion shares, over 75 times the volume of 25 years ago. And get this, the houses did not have to shut down early to count and catch up. Thank God, Intel, Cisco, Oracle and IBM for technology!

But my points are many. Times have radically changed. We are all getting older and the old numbers don’t mean so much now. As a nation we are tremendously richer and our technology has grown faster than needed to match our pace. What mattered before in my younger years does not matter so much anymore. 400 points then would have been ruin for me. Today I find myself looking for an opportunity. And what matters now never crossed my mind when the Dow was at 1000. The higher the numbers of my age it seems the higher any number has to be to impress me. Back then a 3 percent drop would have sent me into a funk that would have driven me to the bar that was always strategically located near the brokerage office and more than enough whiskey to settle the nerves of a young nail-biting broker. Today, I looked at the numbers, shrugged and came home to write this. Did I get my ass kicked today on Wall Street? Well, I won’t tell you how bad it was as the fact is this: it is really only filthy lucre. The beauty in my life now lies a long way from the corner of Wall and Broad. But don’t get me wrong, my nose will be in the charts and graphs in the morning, hunting for that number that may make the difference….

Don

Where did Christmas Go?

2007-01-27T06:09:00.000-07:00

As I write this, Christmas is 30 days past. Where did it go?

I love Christmas. I love the colors, the sounds, the music, the cheer, the food, the goodies, the spirit of giving and the spiritual aspect of the season. I am a solid Christian and I celebrate the virgin birth of Christ and the hope that he brings to all of us in complete wonder and amazement. While I am bothered by the ever increasing materialism and commercialization and the ever longer season (now it seems to start at Halloween and not Thanksgiving!) I have always found a change in all people during Christmas. We tend to be friendlier, and certainly more giving.

Most charitable organizations live and die at Christmas, just like the retailers. When I was on the board of the Holy Cross Food Bank, we made our whole year at Christmas as the donations of cash would soar exponentially. We would bring in enough cash to feed hundreds of needy families for the other eleven months of the year when donations were no where in sight. Most companies from the smallest to the corporate giants sponsor food and gift drives at Christmas and take care of poor families with food, gifts for the children and other help. At the hospital where I work we have a giving tree where gift requests for poor families and children are placed and for as long as I can remember the tree needs restocked with requests many times before the holiday actually comes. The spirit of giving, brotherly and sisterly love and kindheartedness overflows.

Why doesn’t this last all year? There are people who give all year long, but I think the far majority of us only do it at Christmas. This is a tragedy. The United States is the richest nation that ever existed and we can easily take care of those in need if we would just loosen the death grip we have on our wallets. I will not go into a lot of detailed economic numbers to prove the point as I don’t have to, but I will share a couple. The gross domestic product of the United States is about $38,000 per year per person. Given that a large part of the population does not work, the actual production per working person is substantially higher. Additionally, according to economist and Professor Lowell Catlett from New Mexico State University, the total production capacity in the world is 40 percent greater than what we are now using. Given these two statistics it is clear that our income, production and capacity are more than enough to take care of the poor, not only of our nation, but of the world at all times, not just at Christmas.

But the thing that I find most disturbing thirty days after Christmas is the morbid degradation of kindheartedness into meanness, violence, selfishness and outright nastiness. I have seen it myself here in my small community and have seen people who appeared kind hearted and free giving at Christmas turn into rabid monsters hatching diabolic plots to harm, cheat, and destroy. I also see this at all levels in our society, not just in little old Casper, Wyoming. But it really should not happen in little old Casper, or anywhere for that matter.

My church teaches me that I should not pontificate on the hypocrisy and errors of others. But I must say something as this cannot continue. We must realize what we as individuals and as a nation are doing and that we are headed down the wrong road. There is a country song out now where the singer says she is a “redneck” and leaves her Christmas lights on her porch all year long. Maybe we should all do this as a reminder that the spirit of the season needs to be kept alive, and every day made Christmas.

Don

God Bless you Frank Bingham

2006-11-14T13:36:00.000-07:00

I went to bed last night about 9:30, exhausted and very anxious to go to sleep. As I usually do when I crawl into bed, I started to pray. I prayed that God would bless my wonderful husband Don, my children and their children and all of my family. I always ask that He will keep them all healthy, happy and safe from any harm and before I knew it I was praying for a man that I don't even know. This gentleman, Frank Bingham, had his world ripped from him last Friday night, November 10th, at 8:40 PM.

The story goes that on Friday nights he and his lovely wife Rebecca and their two beautiful children, Macie, 4 and Garrison, 2 had taken their usual trip to downtown Denver via the light rail to spend some family time at a bakery where they enjoyed each others' company and a cup of hot cocoa. Macie dressed up as a ballerina princess and Garrison in his Superman cape were sitting in the double stroller that Frank and Rebecca were pushing and were totally unaware that this would be the last outing they would have the chance to share as a family. This beautiful family was crossing the street at 15th and Arahapoe when a red pickup truck sped through the intersection and literally mowed this family down. In one split second, the lives of so many people had been changed forever, all at the hands of one man, Lawrence Trujillo, who made the choice to get behind the wheel of his pickup when he had been drinking.

According to the Denver post Trujillo said that he was driving at the time of the accident and he also admitted to being too intoxicated to drive. He said that he was aware that he had struck pedestrians, and attempted to hide his vehicle from the police.

We were in Denver Friday night and heard this story on the 10 o'clock news and were just sickened about the fact that someone could perform such a horrific act and then continue on without even bothering to stop. We learned that Macie and Garrison has suffered fatal injuries but that their parents were still alive. I expressed to Don, Dori and Patti that if that were my children that I would want to go with them, as I didn't know how a parent could live through such a tragedy. We awoke Saturday morning to the news that Rebecca had succumbed to her injuries sometime during the night but that Frank was in stable condition. I don't even know these people, although from everything that I've read they were an amazing family and my heart is breaking still for Frank Bingham as tomorrow he is going to bury his wife and two children. I can only hope that someone somewhere can learn from this terrible tragedy that one's actions can change the lives of so many people.

Don often tells me that I can't save the whole world even though I'd love to, but I can continue to pray that people get back to the basics of life and start caring about others and realize how their choices can impact so many lives.

I woke up this morning and began to cry as I was telling Don about my dream I had last night. I dreamed that I was at the accident site and saw the angels swoop down and pick up Macie and Garrison. They wrapped these beautiful children in their arms and told them that they were going to carry them home. The next thing I remember was that I could hear the doctors and nurses hollering, "we're losing her," and there were more angels. I heard the angels tell Rebecca "your babies need you, you're coming with us."

As some of you know when my Mom was in hospice and dying she told us one day that the room was full of angels and I have often asked myself why I didn't ask her what they looked like. I saw the angels in my dream last night and they were beautiful. I guess I really don't know what the point is in writing this other than to beg each and every one of you to please think about how your actions are going to affect so many people, just as this horrible accident has.

Mr. Bingham, I pray that God will keep you in his loving arms and that you will get through this horrible ordeal knowing that your beautiful wife Rebecca is with Macie and Garrison, probably sharing a cup of hot cocoa and reading a book together, somewhere where they don't have to worry about drunk drivers and bad choices.

Laura

Garrison and Macie Bingham

It's a Bitch

2006-11-05T12:28:00.000-07:00

I had a squamous cell carcinoma removed from the front of my upper leg two weeks ago. This is the second in a year; the first was on my back. Both grew fast and it was Laura’s sharp eye that resulted in a quick trip to the dermatologist's office. I needed to get in and have the lesions looked at. They say this is my skin’s way of paying me back for years on the lake without sunscreen. But having skin cancer is not the purpose of this posting; no it is something far more important.

Halloween night Ethan came by for a huge helping of treats that included his own Spiderman bucket with suckers, chocolate, microwave popcorn, coloring books and a five dollar bill. I sat with him on the floor going through his loot and he spotted the scab on my leg from where the lesion was removed. Pointing at it he said, “Is it a bitch, Papa?”

“What???”

“Is it a bitch, Papa,” he asked me again.

Yes, Ethan, I thought, cancer is a bitch; there is no way around it. But Laura, Donnie, Emily and I started laughing uncontrollably at what he had said, so I asked him again. “Tell Papa what this is, E.”

“It’s a bitch, Papa.”

When we stopped laughing, Emily finally explained what he was saying. Apparently, he got a scratch from playing with his dog Riley and his parents told him that Riley “bit you.” Now, say this out loud just as you would if talking to someone else: “Riley bit you.” If you listen closely to yourself, you most likely said, “Riley bitchu,” contracting bit and you in the way most Americans destroy English. As so the mystery is solved. Ethan, hearing exactly what people say he thinks a scratch is from where his dog bitch, not bit.

Ah, the innocence of a child not quite three years old. Repeating exactly what he has heard, he told me my cancer was a bitch and he is right, at least in some sense. No, Riley did not bite me, but E thought she had. Something potentially a lot worse bit me. Skin cancer will not kill me, as long as I watch out for these lesions and see the doctor. Some other cancer may get me one day as many of us seem destined to face this modern epidemic. Yes, Ethan, it was just a little bitch, but thanks for once again making me acutely aware of how precious all things are, especially sitting on the floor investigating Halloween loot with a three year old. Papa loves you.

Don

Goodnight Harry

2006-02-22T07:01:00.000-07:00

Today would have been Harry’s birthday. (I wrote about Harry on my last blog post here.) I was so hoping Harry would live to see another birthday because I had a whole list of books I wanted to send him for a gift. Sadly, he did not see this day.

This is also the day that Chet has decided to place Harry’s ashes, along with a few mementos into the niche where he, and eventually Chet, will rest forever. He will spend a very long time at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Hollywood looking out over a beautiful garden at a massive statue of Christ across the way. Eventually, all things are no more and this cemetery with Harry and Chet will be dispersed back into the cosmos where we all ultimately originated. Choosing the day that Harry came into this world to be the day he returns from where he came has touched my heart and for some reason this just strikes me as a proper Harry “thing”.

This is the view from Harry's final place of rest.

As for me on this day, I am going to Las Vegas, and not without a large chunk of guilt. I wanted to be there when Chet put Harry to final rest, but our vacation, planned for a year, has taken precedence. If Harry could talk to me from his ashes I think he would have some pithy comment for me like, “Go to Vegas while you can! Hell, I am not going anywhere so come see me anytime.” Don’t worry, Harry, I will be there soon. I’ll put $5 on the pass line for you, Harry, since I could never see you as a wrong-way bettor.

I transferred Mozart’s Piano Concerto numbers 12 and 20 to my MP3 player to listen to today while I travel. Harry would have liked these pieces, and he probably played them. I know he will be listening with me.

Goodnight Harry.
Don

Harry

2005-12-14T11:03:00.000-07:00

I have a remarkable friend named Harry. Harry has lived with Laura's Uncle Chet for probably four decades; most of the time in their small home in the Hollywood Hills of southern California, located just below the famous landmark Hollywood sign. The last time I saw Harry he was 80 years old and living with a variety of health problems, most recently having been diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer.

Harry and Chet's home is modest place, probably no more than 800 square feet. Like most homes in the Hollywood Hills it sits on the side of a steep incline on an extraordinarily narrow street, with two steep flights of stairs from the street to the front door. They have no lawn, but the steep front yard is covered with ivy and surrounded by holly bushes, a grapefruit tree and some native trees older than the house itself. The backyard is, likewise, without grass, but not a square inch is left without something growing on it. It is nicely decorated with flowering plants, bushes and a lemon tree. A patio in the back is very secluded given the houses are all on tiny lots compared to those I am used to in Wyoming,

With two bedrooms, a small bath and kitchen, relaxing dining room and even more relaxing living room, here Harry and Chet have lived together through their careers and retirement and share their home with Lorraine, a stray cat. Every room contains books on shelves, tabletops and the floor, reflecting the broad intelligence and character of both these men. Comfortable and dated, this has been their home for 36 years.

I first met Harry five years ago when Laura and I made our first trip to California to go wine tasting. We drove that year and decided to make the trip home from the Central Coast down through Los Angeles, on to Palm Springs then up through Las Vegas. We stopped in Hollywood and had lunch with Chet and Harry. Chet had lunch nearly ready and while Laura helped him get lunch on the table, Harry and I sat in the living room and got to know one another. "I learned long ago to stay out of the way and just wait to be called," Harry told me when I mentioned we should go help get lunch ready. In the relationship they have, Chet does the cooking and Harry let me know then that Chet had fed him well over the years. Harry was a retired teacher and had taught English and algebra in both high school and at a junior college. He is a voracious reader and an accomplished classical pianist. Nearly one-fourth of their living room is occupied by a baby grand piano, shrouded in mounds of music charts by Chopin, Beethoven and Mozart. My first visit with Harry was no more than an hour or so total as we sat and visited, then ate lunch with Chet and Laura. But an hour was all that I needed to walk away knowing I had met a remarkable man who had a steel trap mind and a broad range of knowledge I was envious of. There was not a topic that we could not converse on and he had a genuine interest in everything I had to say.

I am not sure why I had not met Harry earlier since I had known Uncle Chet since Laura and I married 29 years ago. I knew he had lived with Chet for as long as Laura could recall and for some reason I swear I had been told he was a retired merchant marine.

Since that first meeting we have tried to see Chet and Harry each time we have been in Southern California. Last April I had meetings in Marina del Rey and we were planning on getting over to Hollywood to see them, but Harry had just been treated for throat cancer and also had a lesion removed from his face and just was not doing well enough to withstand a visit.

The first week of this November we were in Los Angeles once again for my work and we also planned to visit them in Hollywood. Chet had told us we would have to play it by ear since Harry's battle with prostate cancer had left him tired and he slept most of the day and had trouble keeping food down. I was almost certain we would not be able to see them but I understood given his illness. We were pleasantly surprised when we arrived at LAX and Laura called Chet to see how things were going for a possible visit and heard that he had made bean soup and lunch would be ready. Nearly two hours later, due to the terrible Los Angeles traffic, we arrived in Hollywood where Chet was waiting on the step on the street level for us. After hugs and greetings we climbed to the house and found Harry bundled in a blanket on the sofa.

He was sick. My estimate was he had lost 50 pounds (it turned out I was close - he had lost 60) and his color was pale, cheeks sunken and speech somewhat slurred. But he was still Harry, as sharp as ever and ready for company. We visited through lunch and for a large part of the afternoon as Laura and Chet cleaned. He told me of his years teaching and playing classical piano. He was thrilled to learn that I was now on the board of the Wyoming Symphony and he encouraged me to stick with it, do the right thing and push for what I wanted out of the symphony, even though it was nearly broke, like most symphony orchestras in the nation. He told me tales of playing as a union musician through the years and that he still sat at the keyboard when he had the energy. But, our conversation and visit tired him and we left him to rest, returning to the hotel late that afternoon thinking that was probably the last time we would ever see Harry.

The next day we were greatly surprised when we called Chet. He told Laura that our visit had revitalized Harry and he was already asking when we would be returning to visit again that day. So, for the second day in a row we ventured out into the Los Angeles traffic for Hollywood. We found Harry on the sofa ready to resume where we had left off the prior day. As had become our tradition, Laura and Chet started in the kitchen leaving Harry and I to visit in the living room. I had brought them two books and Harry had glanced at them the night before. One book was Laurence Leamer’s recent biography of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Fantastic, which Harry found interesting at a glance since most of photos were of a young, body building Arnold and not of Arnold the politician. We talked politics of all sorts and, specifically, about Arnold.

But through the entire conversation, the odd thing I found was that Harry was genuinely curious about my meetings that week in Los Angeles and about what exactly I was doing in my work. Now, I find my work to be beyond boring and sleep inducing, certainly not suitable for casual conversation, but Harry really wanted to know about it. And, as I explained to him that I was there to meet with other healthcare Chief Information Officers from around the country to discuss an integrated nationwide electronic medical record, he understood completely and was concerned about the costs of such a project and what it would bring to healthcare. Not only was he well read with a steel-trap mind, his analytical skills were as sharp as mine were. Most people in my own industry do not understand these things, but Harry did.

Harry tired earlier that day than the day before but told us repeatedly how our visit had brought him back to life. So, Chet, Laura and I left him to rest and went to see, of all things, the place that the two of them had selected to spend eternity: at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Hollywood, overlooking the studios. They had decided to be cremated and be placed in the same niche in an above ground columbarium with a view of a beautiful garden. This is in the same columbarium section where Bette Davis and Liberace rest so Chet thought they would both be in good company for eternity. It was an odd feeling looking at this place knowing that Harry would soon rest there. But the beauty of the grounds and the peacefulness that surrounded it took any eerie feelings away. We took Chet back home and said our goodbyes. Saline eyes made driving the freeways a little tricky back to the hotel.

Harry passed on two days ago, December 12, 2005 at 1:30 in the morning. Laura received the call from Chet yesterday and knew right away that it was not a good call. Chet told her that Harry’s condition had steadily worsened since our visit a month earlier. However, the high point was our visit that weekend in November. He went peacefully, and in his last hours of suffering Chet laid in bed with him, his arms wrapped around Harry to comfort him in his passing. He was sharp as ever, Chet said. His body gave up on him, his mind did not.

In total I spent maybe six hours of my life with Harry. He became my eternal friend and touched me deeply. A man of character, skilled in his art and his science, he was a man of complete integrity and used his intelligence to its fullest. I learned that Harry once had a terrible struggle with the bottle that almost killed him. He beat it and he became one of my heroes. Harry gave me four pieces of advice, two of which I spoke of above – do the right thing and press for what you want. The two others were, in his words, “Never do work you do not love,” and “Stay away from that God damned prostate cancer.” I think Harry took his own advice on the first three, but could not avoid the fourth, through no fault of his own. Chet says that Harry loved me so I guess I touched a dying man’s heart in some way. In only six hours we achieved the deepest friendship. I will miss my friend.

This picture was taken about 10 minutes before I left Harry's company for the last time. Now, if I can only heed Harry’s advice…

Don

Power

2005-11-02T10:40:00.000-07:00

Someone close to me was fired from his job yesterday. He has lost his only source of income, his health insurance, his benefits and any future retirement accruals. He is emotionally wrecked. He was accused of sexual harassment; one of the hottest personnel topics that trial lawyers, human resources directors, juries and managers get all worked up about these days. I don’t want to give too many details on this case since I believe this person has an excellent case for wrongful termination and, possibly age discrimination. I have been involved in my share of firings during my career as a manager, some including sexual harassment, and this case looks pretty weak. The company did not follow their internal policies nor provide any sort of due process. Therefore, I am not saying much since I think there is a good case here against the employer.

I bring this up because it makes me realize the power that seemingly ordinary people have in our society. Managers have the power to end someone’s livelihood or career with no notice at all. These are ordinary people who are our neighbors. In some cases these managers are totally incompetent, others only marginally competent, while other managers are extremely well prepared and excellent managers in all respects. But it does not matter; managers across the spectrum wield a tremendous amount of power and some use it without ever considering the consequences of their actions.

I have seen this happen in my own career. I remember one case in particular where an employee in one of my departments was accused by another employee of breaking patient confidentiality. Now, in healthcare this is a serious offense since patient confidentiality is sacred. The allegation was that the accused employee had taken some very sensitive information and spread it by word of mouth to those outside the organization in an attempt to damage the reputation of the patient. When the complaint came to me I immediately contacted the human resources director, told him about the complaint and asked him how to proceed per company policy. He had me bring the accused employee to his office right away, which I did. When we arrived, he immediately fired the employee, handed her final paycheck to her and had security escort her from the property. I asked him why we did not investigate the allegation prior to taking that action to which he responded that the charge was serious enough that we needed to take immediate action to protect the corporation.

Well, you can guess what happened. The fired employee filed a complaint of wrongful termination and all the people outside the organization, who she supposedly gave confidential information to, denied she ever did it. That left us with no proof at all to support our termination of this employee. What made matters worse was that the employee was a woman over 50 years of age so we were now facing an age and, possibly sex discrimination suit. Her job was given back to her. It should never have been taken away from her without an investigation. I learned a lesson on this one I have never forgotten.

I share this story to show the amount of power managers have. In this case, it worked out in the long run, but only after a significant amount was spent on attorneys and the employee underwent an unknown amount of emotional distress.

Sexual harassment is another issue all together. The fear of being sued and the actions of some courts have made it so corporations are oversensitive to these complaints and they take action that far exceeds the allegations in many instances. I believe the old days when a male manager told female subordinates that they had to provide sexual favors in return for promotions, raises and even continued employment are gone. There may be a few nuts out there that still try this, but I have never seen it or know of it happening. Since these quid pro quo cases are rare, we now have to deal with this idea of the hostile work environment. I believe this type of harassment happens somewhat more frequently and I have seen it occur, but I don’t believe the motives of the accused are necessarily to sexually harass people in the majority of cases. People tell dirty jokes not to harass others, but to be funny and in some cases liven up the mundane daily tasks and environment of the workplace. People also don’t get into affairs with their coworkers to harass one another; they are just stupid for trying to fish off the company pier. But how many of these affairs-gone-sour have ended up in sexual harassment complaints with destroyed lives left in the aftermath? Too many to count.

My concern since this became the greatest fear of personnel directors and the bait for the rabid hyena trial lawyers waiting just outside the corporate door is how it seems an accused employee is guilty before proven innocent. The fact is if a female coworker, who is not a subordinate of mine, accuses me of propositioning her or pinching her butt, it is a case of her word against mine and I will be placed on administrative leave until an investigation is completed. Likewise, if a woman works directly for me that I supervise tells human resources that I requested sex in exchange for a raise, in classic quid pro quo fashion, the same process would happen. The fact is in both cases I am considered guilty and have no recourse to prove my innocence and without witnesses I am screwed, pun intended. To avoid an attack by the hyenas on the company, I am expendable. So now the power lies not only with managers but also with coworkers who can accuse and get other managers to exercise their power. I always have recourse to the courts for a wrongful termination case, but I will be professionally, financially and emotionally damaged.

So we have this issue of power which I believe is much greater than we realize. While I was learning the fate of my friend yesterday, I was at the same time dealing with an issue in my work where the nuances of power are much subtler. Allow me to explain further.

While working on a minor restructuring in one of my departments, we have decided to consolidate some management positions into one high level manager who will confront the ever changing environment we face in our industry and adapt the department to the changes in technology, customer demands and finances. In my managerial position I can hire new people to fill this high level position, keep the staff we have or do anything in between. I can end someone’s employment with little or no thought or consideration of their emotional as well as their financial wellbeing, all in the name of strengthening the company. Or, I can promote from within, saving employees the distress of facing unemployment or permanent career damage and channel my energies to developing the careers of existing staff. While looking at this project, and thinking about the above case, it came to me that the power given me over others is extraordinary.

The question is what will I do with that power?

This has caused me to pause. In our society corporations should exist to serve the people. But I wonder if we have elevated the stature of the inanimate corporation to the level of human beings? Is the value of the company worth more than that of an individual? These are very difficult questions. I could argue that I should always do what is best for the company since it serves as a base of employment for 1200 people and serves thousands of customers each year. But at what price? One individual? Two? Where do I draw the line? Power can be used for destruction or construction but there are always subtleties and hidden effects that can make a constructive move damaging to others in the long run.

Power; sometimes I wish I did not have it. If anything good has come from the firing I spoke of above it is that it has caused me to stop and consider my alternatives and to evaluate the potential outcomes of any power decisions I make.

Don

A Terrible Day

2005-09-25T08:28:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was the worst day of the year for us. We have repeated this day each of the last five years and it gets worse every year. I woke up at 6:15 and it seemed darker than normal outside for that time of day given the little light that edged its way around the bedroom blinds. I laid there for a minute or two before nudging Laura. I knew she was awake by her breathing and I knew she was not looking forward to the day anymore than I.

“Are you ready?” I asked as I prodded her into full wakefulness.

“I suppose,” was her sole reply. Generally, we lie in bed for a while and visit before I get up for work but today there was no visiting. We were not mad at one another, nor being anything but our usually affectionate selves. We just did not want to face this day.

It was raining, very lightly, but raining nonetheless and this certainly did not enliven our moods. We drove in relative silence and in my mind I could hear Shandon telling me, “It’s OK Papa. Don’t worry Papa,” like he always did when he could sense something was not exactly right. Laura’s mother always said he was an angel and we tend to believe her since Shandon could always tell when something was up and he always had a comforting word in his simple two year old English. Like the times when he would come to visit and the mornings of the last day of his stay when he had to go home. These were terrible days for us and he would always tell us not to worry. Yesterday he was with me in some angelic sense, trying to comfort me the way no one else can. But he was not there with us in person. And that was part of the difficulty of the day.

“What do you want me to do,” Laura asked as we untied our lines and stowed lifejackets and fenders that were entering a 203 day hibernation.

“Just drive it over there and I will be right there to meet you”, I answered and as she pulled away from the slip our simple boat had called home the past five months I could not even turn to watch.

I am not sure how, but I was able to hitch the trailer in one try and back it into the water in one shot even with sight foggy with tears. It took us less than a couple minutes to load the boat on the trailer and get it ready to pull to town. It would take most of the day to get it cleaned and ready for winter storage.

Yesterday was the terrible day we called an end to our boating season. There would be no more of Ethan sitting in the captain’s chair, death grip on the wheel, telling himself over and over, “Drive and drive,” as we sped across the lake. There would be no more of Shandon telling me, “Go Papa, go!” as we hit the water and he wanted me to put the throttle to it. There would be no more barbecued hot dogs on the beach, now more lake gourmet with white wine in a paper cups and ham sandwiches, no more naps together on our boat, no more jumping in the middle of the lake to escape the heat, no more lunches on the Boat Club deck and no more rides to town with the boys asleep in the back seat after a long day on the lake. This is the worst day of the year for us.

We finished our fifth year on the lake with our little pontoon boat. It is nothing fancy, has no galley, head or cabins. But we eat and sleep on it in more comfort than if it were a 100 foot ocean going yacht. We always tell each other that we cannot believe what use we have gotten from it and how much it has added to our lives. By far, it was the best thing we ever bought.

This was a great year on the lake. (For photos, click here.) We had Shandon and Ethan out more than we could imagine. They are learning to love the lake, the boat, the beach and the fun. They used to fight having to wear their life jackets and now they don’t even notice them. “Wanna go to Papa’s lake,” Shandon would say when he came to visit. “Boat…drive and drive,” Ethan would tell us when he was ready to go. They both learned to play in the water this year and that the water would not hurt them. They both learned sand castle engineering and that plenty of juice is a requirement in the sun. They both learned to drive sitting on my lap and, unlike their grandma, they never ran us aground. They would smile with ketchup grins at their Nini who shared her French fries with them at the Boat Club. They left their footprints in the sand as they drug us down the beach to play. They befriended every dog they met on the beach and quite a few strangers too. They left their mark on Alcova Lake as only little boys can and they left a huge mark on our hearts as only little boys on beaches can.

We will be back next year: Laura and I taking our naps on our yacht; cooking hot dogs and burgers on the portable barbecue that passes for our galley; drinking wine from a paper cup in lake gourmet style; building sand castles with two boys who are a year older and a little more adventuresome since they will be back too. Their footprints in the sand will be a half inch longer, their appetites a little larger and they will want Pepsi instead of apple juice. They will want to drive by themselves and we will let them. And they will crash in the backseat on the drive into town.

Only 202 days - this should be enough time for my sadness to wane and my tears to dry.

Don

Reflections on Japan

2005-09-10T11:47:00.000-06:00

It has been one month since we returned from Japan and, I am sad to say, this is the first and maybe only posting you will see about our trip. Fact is, I was just not sure what to write about. It goes without saying that we had a great time, saw some old loved ones and friends and met knew friends. Saw many different, sometimes strange and beautiful things. But this is nothing new for a vacation to a foreign land and I don’t want to bore you with any trite descriptions of our vacation which would be like those days we had to sit through some relative’s slides of their trip to Yellowstone. So, what follows is basically free flowing thought and I have not developed any outline ahead of time.

We took enough pictures to have a grand slide show if anyone is interested. In fact, we took over 500 and after weeding out the bad ones we are left with 498. Fifty of these have been on the photo album pages for some time and were chosen as a representative example. Truly, if you want a slide show let us know and we will have you over for dinner and a show. Or, if you want to see the whole thing on your own time let me know and I will burn a CD for you.

But more important than the photographs themselves, their number or our slide show is what the pictures reveal. Japan is a place of severe contrasts. For instance in Kyoto we stayed in a modern western-style hotel directly across the street from a former imperial castle dating back hundreds of year. This modern city is dotted with seemingly countless Buddhist temples that are also ancient, especially when compared with our oldest buildings in America. Street vendors sell everything from pottery to fresh fish in the shadows of high rise department stores stocked with Armani. The Shinkansen (bullet train) took us to Kyoto at 150 miles per hour and there are still rickshaws with Geishas on the streets of the city. However the one contrast we did not see in Japan (and I did not see my previous time there in 1997) were slums, grafitti and the garbage we see in ever growing size in the states. I know Japan has its poor, but I get the sense that there is not nearly the class distinction that we are now seeing in our country. I am sure it exists, but we did not see it.

Our photographs show smiling faces, good food and fun and the contrasts of the modern and antiquity. But, they do not show emotion. We were particularly struck by Japanese people’s lack of emotion. They simply do not show a lot of it. We rarely saw couples holding hands while walking down the streets or loved ones hug and kiss when meeting each other. At the times we hugged people it was met with an uncomfortable stiffness. Not that this is wrong as it certainly isn’t. It is just their culture and it is quite different than ours. Laura and I are chronic hand holders and rarely walk together anywhere without holding hands and we maintained that habit in Japan. We stood out, I am sure – two blonde foreigners, much larger than the average Japanese, holding on to each other everwhere we went. We snapped one photo of Haruko and Hideya holding hands one night walking the streets of Kyoto. This was good to see, but it was a rare occurrence.

If the Japanese keep their emotions to themselves (or only express them in private) there is one thing they broadcast all over: courtesy and kindness. Haruko always told us she struggled when she returned to Japan because the people were rude and stepped in front of others in the train stations and so forth. We never saw this rudeness at all and, in fact, were surprised at how courteous others seemed to be. They bowed in various degrees when they met us, or excused themselves when they gave the most minor offense. In shops, from the smallest street vendor to the largest department store to the McDonalds or Baskin Robbins, they still treat the customer right in Japan. They greet the customer, serve them well, thank them whole heartedly and showed the utmost courtesy imaginable. This has disappeared in America except in the most high end stores and restaurants. New friends we met as well as old friends we were seeing again greeted us with gifts and praise of how well we looked, far beyond what we expect in the states. Our friends are in our photos as well as those who waited on us – they were that impressive.

We were told a number of times how bad the economy in Japan is these days. We could not see it. Everywhere we went people were shopping, eating and working. They are in our photos in the backgrounds of the smiling friends. In fact, it seemed to us that the Japanese like to eat more than Americans, but we could not figure out how they stay so slim! Food was everywhere. In the supermarkets, on the streets, in convenience stores and in restaurants there was always more food than can conceivably be crammed into the space they have. And not only that, there seemed to be supermarkets, street vendors, convenience stores and restaurants everywhere. But we rarely saw an obese native. Why? Well, everything we ate was accompanied by an explanation of why it was good for you. “This is good for your digestion,” we would be told when served some pickled vegetable. The fact is, the diet in Japan, while it contains much fried food such as tempura, is very healthy. The produce was better than nearly all we see in the states and the fruits have a natural sweetness that makes one think they are injected with sugar. Fish takes the place of beef simply because it is more abundant and much less expensive. Rice is everywhere, and we mean everywhere. It is served at all meals and it is grown whereever we looked. In fact, in the countryside, many “yards” are actually rice paddies. Tea is the staple drink and is sold in many varieties in vending machines everywhere. Green tea seems to be preferred and we were told it was good for everything from preventing disease to helping the memory.

All the Japanese we met and interacted with do not like President Bush. In fact, I was struck by how much America’s image has declined in Japan since I was there in 1997. Japan is a pacifist country and has been since World War II. They have not had much military since the war and had not engaged in any military action until we invaded Iraq and President Bush talked their Prime Minister into joining us there. August 6 is my birthday. It is also the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. We wanted to visit that city, but there was not enough time. We were in Japan on August 6 and it was a national day of prayer and mourning. August 9 is the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. Oddly enough, on August 9 at approximately 11:00am we were walking up a steep narrow street in Kyoto approaching a very large and old Buddhist temple that is nestled into the side of a mountain. A voice came from loudspeakers throughout the street and the city and said that it had been exactly 60 years ago that minute that the nuclear bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and that everyone should pause and say a prayer for peace. And they did, and we did. We continued our climb to the temple and I could not get this whole picture out of my mind – that we were standing in a temple of a religion that practices complete pacifism, in a country that has been pacifist for 60 years, amongst thousands of pacifist visitors to the temple who were there to honor their dead loved ones during a Buddhist holy season. And now we have drug their country into this Iraq mess and their citizens are angry at their Prime Minister, our President and our country. I was looking for a word one night to describe Americans to Hideya and the Japanese word that works best is goman, which roughly translates as “arrogant”. Shame on us.

Finally, our photos explore the depths of life in Japan. We are fortunate in that we are not tourists when we visit there, at least not in the classic sense. We live with Japanese people in Japanese homes and do the things that Japanese people do in their daily lives. Surprisingly, for all the differences, daily life is much the same as it is in America and consists of work, play, grocery shopping, feeding the cat, washing the dishes, trying to stay cool in the heat and humidity and so forth. Seeing Japan this way allowed us a glimpse into their lives and we found the struggle with the same issues we do, for the most part. We are fortunate in that we have friends and loved ones there that can see what typical Americans are really like and that we are not all arrogant, warmongering tyrants. There are too many names of our Japanese friends and loved ones to mention here, but we love and miss them all. We will be back someday, but not in the summer!

Don

Go Boldly to Eternity, Jimmy Doohan

2005-07-21T07:52:00.000-06:00

I run the risk of being labeled one of those nut case Star Trek fanatics when I say I am truly mourning the death of James Montgomery Doohan. He played engineer Montgomery Scott on Star Trek and, yes I mourn his passing. Doohan died yesterday at 85 years, struggling his last couple with Alzheimer’s. If you think I am a nut, well that is ok.

The fact is that Star Trek was one of the defining phenomenons of my generation. Its themes reflected the times:

Vietnam

then the Cold War, racism, sexism, Communism and countless other ism’s were tackled in its scripts. The show’s writers were not afraid to take on any subject, set it in the future on some far away planet and let us have it. The show broke new ground. For instance, Star Trek aired the first televised interracial kiss, one between Captain Kirk and Lt. Uhuru. The later films which came years after the show left television continued taking on issues and showed us the importance of loyalty and long term relationships. I sincerely believe the United State’s space program’s success was due, in part to Star Trek and the ideals it promoted with space exploration as its back drop.

I remember clearly watching the show weekly, then daily in reruns when I was in high school. Each day my best friend Doug Rath and I would hurry home to my place or his to catch an episode that started at 3:00. Later, after VCR’s entered our world I recorded those I could not catch and eventually had the whole series on tape. I must have seen each episode 20 times. For me, the space and technology and aliens were fascinating. But more so were the characters. They presented a perfectly working, loyal and dedicated team who were in it for the common good and not individual gain. My favorite was Lt. Commander Montgomery Scott.

Each episode we would see Scotty cobble together a broken down starship with whatever he could scavenge and seemed to fix it better than before. He was also perfectly loyal to his captain and a staunch defender of his ship. In one show he ended up with some time confined to quarters for brawling with some Klingons when they compared his beloved Enterprise to a garbage scow. However, his confinement was welcomed as he said it would give him time to catch up on his technical manuals. Granted, Scotty was the creation of the show’s writers, but he was the ideal for those of us who loved technology and dreamed one day of doing the things Scotty did.

I learned some electronics early on and did some engineering work for local radio stations and also became an amateur radio operator. I have to admit some of the repairs I made to the old KVOC transmitter were done in Scotty style and my old amateur radio shack was the same way. Laura and I had no money then and I patched together my ham radios I was able to buy with ones I scavenged in second hand shops and other parts and gadgets I found lying around the back rooms of old radio stations. Mr. Scott would have been proud of my shack.

I know, James Doohan was not Montgomery Scott. He was an actor that played a fictional character. But he gave us this character which we would never have known without Doohan’s talents. Thanks Jimmy Doohan. Boldly go to your final place.

Don

Why God Created Picnics

2005-07-08T21:44:00.000-06:00

You might stop at the title of this entry thinking God had nothing to do with the invention of picnics, barbecues, or just eating outside. But I believe he did. Adam and Eve certainly ate all the fruits of the garden out in the clean air and sunshine as did those who followed afterwards when humans were banished from paradise. If you are not one with a particular religion, you most certainly have to admit that Homo sapiens, as well as the Homo-species that preceded us ate in the wide open outdoors, for the most part. Let’s just say that eating outside (which I will call “picnics” from here on) is a natural part of our nature, agreed?

Now, I have finally figured out why God really created picnics and it is really rather simple when you think about it. He invented them for little boys! Allow me to explain.

1. Picnics always come with uninvited guests – BUGS – that are a joy to little boys. There is nothing better to catch the attention and wonder of a little boy than an insect, just as long as it isn’t too big or too scary. Shandon and Ethan both can follow an ant forever across the patio, truly fascinated with them. Shandon can spend an equal amount of time studying roly-poly bugs that he calls Roly Poly Olie and is even past the fear of picking them up. If God had meant picnics for adults, the bugs would never have gotten an invitation. Just look at this surprise expresion when this picnic expert sees the arrival of one of the uninvited guests:

2. Food that is served at picnics is generally eaten by hand. The fact is that utensils are nothing but a nuisance for little boys and need to go away. Little boys are fascinated with tools and eating utensils are not tools. In fact, tools help us do things and forks and spoons only hinder the process of eating and little boys know this. If food was served at picnics that needed utensils for consumption, God would have us picnicking in dining rooms, adults only. If you don't believe me on this, check out this picture of a picnic expert, notice the location of the utensils and notice what he is eating and how:

3. Picnics are usually done on days which just demand that clothes be shed, and a cool off of some type becomes mandatory. Adults generally do not take their clothes off in public and outdoors. Little boys don’t care and that is why they have more fun at picnics than anyone else. Again, I show you an couple experts:

4. Another thing about picnic food that proves that God made picnics for little boys is that it comes with parts that demand to be spit on the ground. Adults would never, ever spit while eating. But for little boys, this is a practice that is embedded in their genes and they just cannot help themselves since it is nothing but instinct. Again, my pictorial proof:

5. The last point of explanation and proof that God created picnics for little boys is plain and simple: both belong outside. Picnics by definition are outdoor events. Boys by necessity belong outside. They need a lot of room to explore, kick balls, chase dogs and just wreak general havoc. Allowed them to do their "stuff" indoors and us adults would have nothing left for a house. The result is this almost symbiotic relationship between picnics and little boys. You cannot have a decent one of either without the other.

So, my point is proven, nothing more need be said. I only ask you, adult reader, have you been having your outdoor feast without the company of a little boy? If so, you are missing the whole point and are not picnicking at all, but regressing to your Neanderthal state and you will soon be seeking a cave and a new weapon to hunt the Wooly Mammoth which you will have to eat raw because you will have lost the capability to make fire. Your outdoor dining requires little boys to keep you young, alive and from this terrible regression. It also keeps you adept at using your hands for eating and it keeps your spitter in good working order. So, have another child if you must, or get your children to give you grandchildren, become a Big Brother or Big Sister, adopt or ask the neighbor kid over, it doesn't matter how you get one, just do it. Then sit back, let the barbecue sauce run down your chin, spit a watermelon seed or two as you watch these wonderful small creatures we call little boys be fascinated with the simplicity and joy of a picnic, and an ant.

Don

Adventure

2005-07-01T11:30:00.000-06:00

It has been quite a while since I have written anything here. I guess the reason is that the things I feel compelled to write about are all a little on the negative side, such as Iraq and the President’s bumbling of that fiasco, recent Supreme Court rulings (why do we seem to be getting so dumb in the country?) The increase in data and privacy breaches also interests me. But, there are those much better equipped to write about those things and their blogs can do these topics more justice. (Some of my favorites are listed at the right of this blog.) Besides I want to write about good things and life and all it has to offer since our family seems to be so greatly blessed.

This story starts some time ago and I have to blame number one grandson Shandon for it. For some reason, he is fascinated and almost obsessed with airplanes and to a lesser extent helicopters. This may be due to the fact that he has flown commercial flights from Sioux Falls to Casper and back many times in his short two years. But, whatever the cause, his eyes are always on the sky looking for airplanes and he can spot them at any time of day, at any altitude. When he hears one and cannot find it, he searches until he does. Big, low flying aircraft bring huge smiles and screams of, “Wow! That was a good one Papa!” So, he got me hooked as a result. He stayed with us for three weeks last month and he is now back for a few days and while we spend most of our time together on the boat, or walking, or playing in the yard, these activities are always accompanied with an eye on the sky. (We do all this with Nini too, of course – that is what he calls Laura.)

When Shandon was here last month I arranged a tour of the hospital’s helicopter and airplane for Shandon. He was allowed to sit in the cockpits and check out both aircraft up close which brought some big smiles to his face and to his Nini and Papa, a flight nurse at the hospital and an airplane pilot with many years of flying. (You can see pictures of this at this page in our photo albums.) Last week when Shandon heard that we was getting to come back to Casper to visit, he told us on the phone that when he came to Nini and Papa’s house he wanted to “sit in the airplane.”

Yesterday we spent most of the day on the lake and he must have spotted a dozen flying overhead. But the day started off a little different than any other day. About 8:30 yesterday morning, I found myself behind the controls of an airplane, sitting on runway 21, number two for take off, my leg muscles rigid with nervousness, feet on the pedals, left hand on the stick, right hand on the throttle. How did I get here and how the hell was I going to get out of this situation?

Well, it seems I talked to a nice gentleman named Joey Lamb a couple weeks ago who is one of the flight instructors here in Casper and he explained the whole set up to me. But, before we get to that, let me say that I really do not have a list of all the nutty things that I plan to complete during my life. Yes, there has been the scuba diving all the way to a Divemaster rating, chasing idiot dive students who have no business being in the water. And then there was the rodeo clown/bull fighting thing and the subsequent MRI and a wine-purple bruise up the crack of my ass that was so deep and rich in color it put the colors of the best Cabernet’s to shame. Honestly, there is no list, these things just come up. A motto I adopted a long time ago, and is actually a quote from Will Rogers, goes like this:

If you done it, it ain’t braggin.

So, back to this airplane thing since this ain’t braggin. I did not tell a soul about it but I went to the airport at 8:00 yesterday and immediately was introduced to the pre-flight check of the plane, external and internal. Then, the clearance from the tower, the run-up and taxi to the runway, and trying to get the idea of driving in three dimensions with my feet. Yes, I learned one steers an airplane on the ground with his feet. Joey was there with me, but the airplane was mine. We followed a twin engine plane to the runway and held there as he took off. As I sat there watching him leave the ground down the runway in front of me the whole scope if this became apparent: I was behind the controls of an airplane and did not have any idea what I was doing. I can still feel the cramps in my legs today. Fighting bulls does not allow one to get tension cramps since rodeo bullfighters are usually running for their lives. Flying an airplane gives one plenty of time for muscle tension since there is no where to run and stretch the muscles out at 7000 feet. Except down, of course and the first step is wicked.

“Three foxtrot-foxtrot, clear for takeoff, right turn approved,” filled the headphones and off we went. Throttle all the way, keeping her straight on the runway with my feet, watching the speed, fifty-five knots and pull back on the stick and she wanted to fly. There really was nothing magic or strange about it. The machine was built to fly and fly it did, even with me and my cramped legs behind the controls.

Now, earlier in the morning I had called my son Donnie and told him what I had planned and if he thought I should say anything to Laura or not. At first, he said no and that I should keep quiet. Then he said, “Well maybe you should. What if you crash?” Nice thing to say to a man on his first time piloting an airplane. So, I devised a plan. I wrote Laura and Shandon a note and left it on the dining room table. The note said that I really wasn’t going to work for a meeting (ok, so I told a little white lie to make this happen) but that they should sit on the deck and watch for airplanes and wave at me as I went by. Laura says she had to read it twice to figure it out. “Oh, God. Now he is flying an airplane. Shandon, get your donut, we need to go out on the deck and watch for your crazy Papa.”

Our flight path took us over downtown and then we turned south, heading straight for the house. After locating it, we flew three circles around it so Laura and Shandon could see and as I looked out the window down on my home, I could almost hear him yelling, “Airplane! Wow, that was a good one Papa!” and I knew I had made his day.

We turned west and headed back to the airport. For some reason Joey would not let me land the plane. Guess I don’t blame him since I have always considered landing an airplane nothing more than a controlled crash, so he set her down and I taxied her back to the ramp and went through the post flight and shut her down. It is hard to get out of the cockpit of an airplane when the cheeks of one’s ass have clamped tight around the seat, but I finally made a quick escape maneuver, luckily leaving the seat behind. Joey and I visited afterwards about flying, training and such. He makes his living, in addition to being a professional pilot, by training private pilots so he needed to explain all this to me – I was a potential customer. Bull rides are eight seconds of adrenaline followed by a few more adrenaline seconds for the bullfighter to get the cowboy off safely and the bull out of the arena. Flying an airplane the first time is an hour or so of adrenaline, then a drive home steering with ones hands. Bulls wanted to kill me, the plane just wanted to fly. There is no comparison.

Laura and Shandon, as well as my mother saw us. They waved, but we could not see them. Laura was laughing about the whole thing and Shandon had to tell me he saw his Papa in an airplane. We headed to the lake for some sun and fun and to watch planes go over piloted by people who are way beyond the adrenaline and tension leg cramps of flying for the first time. Donnie, Emily and Ethan joined us and we ate well, played well in the water and the sand and Laura and I held hands and watched our grandsons and new our lives could never be better. I had two adventures yesterday: flying an airplane and being loved by my family. What else could there be?

Well, I am flying again Monday morning.

Don

Vacation in Mexico Part 3: Piglet

2005-03-27T10:24:00.000-07:00

We have often wondered why so many around the globe despise Americans. We are not talking just about Muslim extremists and terrorists who seem to want to wipe us out. No, we are talking about everyday people in other nations who really do not like Americans. We have heard stories from others, including family members about their travels overseas and, for the most part, they have had pleasant experiences but have encountered a level of American dislike. It seems to be particularly bad with the French. Why is this? Well, there are all the political reasons and our present Administration isn’t doing us any good in this arena and there is the way America tends to throw its military might around. But, there may be something a little more subtle going on here: maybe it’s because of the way Americans behave?

Now, we preface this with the fact that not all Americans have bad manners. Most of those, in fact nearly all Americans we meet in Mexico, are kind, well mannered and do well with the native population that works in the resorts. Don found the same thing while traveling in Japan. Then, there is the occasional American “pig”. Our case in point today concerns a certain American swine that showed the absolute worst side of America and Americans during our vacation in Mexico. Let us set the stage….

It was our last evening in the resort during our wonderful dinner at the Fruita del Mar seafood restaurant at the Bahia Principe resort. About half way through our dinner a couple was seated near us, but to Don’s back so he could not see them. “Good God,” Laura said, “Wait until you see what just came in.” It was downhill from there. The Capitan pulled the woman’s chair out only to be slightly scolded for doing her husband’s job. (This is how we learned they were married.) He was a 55-ish, white haired man of slight build, his hair curly and cut very short, a small gold hoop earring in one ear, fake tan, deck shoes and khaki’s that were four inches too long. Not even average looking, his pock-marked face seemed to try and broadcast a message that said, HEY LOOK AT ME. I HAVE A TON OF MONEY AND YOU WILL PAY ME DUE HOMAGE. For everything he was not, his wife was. Not a day over 25, over six feet with a body and infinitely long legs that had to have spent a lot of time on the super model cat walk. Dark brown hair, perfect olive complextion and a skin tight tank top and denim skirt so short and tight that made us thankful for razors. Drop dead gorgeous, and certainly bought and paid for.

At this point, our service went to hell as it did for all the other guests in the restaurant. That is because our compatriot began demanding complete attention from everyone working there. At various times they commanded at least three Capitans and half dozen waiters. It went something like this.

They brought their own flavored vodka to the restaurant and asked that a drink be made from this. When it was brought they sent it back since it was too strong and scolded the waiter all the way. It was not that they sent the drink back; it was the way in which they scolded the waiter. When it came time to order dinner they demanded to see the chef who was dutifully hauled away from his kitchen and interrogated. He did not speak English, so a Capitan had to interpret.

“Are you French? Are you French trained?” demanded Piglet.

“He is, sir,” responded the Capitan.

“Now, we won’t just have anything off the menu, you see. However, my wife here will have the steak and scallops; medium rare on the steak.”

“Pardon me, sir. This item is for steaks of scallops, not steak and scallops,” answered the Capitan.”

“For God’s sake, can’t this idiot read?” Laura said. He had not even read the menu correctly – now he is not just an American pig, but an illiterate boar to boot!

Piglet continued, “Now, we will have no potato. That is too much starch. We will have asparagus only, but it must be very small and tender, smaller than my little finger here….” and on and on he went with several Capitans and waiters hovering around like drones with a queen bee.

All the while our blood was boiling since our service was now non existent. We finally were able to waive down our waiter to ask for coffee and when he came we asked him if these people were special or what the deal was. He told us they were friends of the resort management and very wealthy. Don asked him if he wanted to know what we call people like that in America and he politely declined since he knew we were going to teach him some American insult he really did not need to know.

After demanding a waiter find him some club soda since he had spilled some of his red vodka on his shirt, Piglet received his first dish which seemed to be some kind of oysters or clams done up very nicely on a platter, large enough for six people. No waiters here, mind you, this was served by the Capitan; and promptly rejected. “We don’t like this, get it out of here,” was Piglet’s directive to the frustrated manager as he nearly shoved it off the table toward the Capitan.

Then, the next course came with a centerpiece of a whole pineapple set aflame to which a Capitan referred to as a volcano. Other tables had noticed the loss of their waiters and another nearby table of people from Georgia were asking what the dish was; since it wasn’t on the menu they had been given.

At this point we almost lost our own dinners, gagging while the super model said over and over again, “Yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy….” bouncing in her chair and wringing her hands like a four year old with a Happy Meal.

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Don blurted out, “grow up. Could you imagine having to live with that?” He asked Laura, certainly loud enough for them to hear. We had had enough and got up to leave only to watch Piglet extract a video camera to film all the glorious dishes the chef had personally prepared for them, filming and sniffing and turning up his nose at regular intervals. We left but not before flagging down a Capitan and asking him to tell the chef our meal was wonderful and much appreciated.

Now we have no problem with money or people who have a lot of it. Good for them! We do have a problem with the supposed power that money gives some people and allows them to act this way. This couple abused the waiters and management of the restaurant, inappropriately interrogated the chef and made fifty other guests have their evenings put on hold so their unrealistic wants could be catered to. The bottom line is this: If you are going to fly first class, act first class. If you are get wine you do not like, you pour it in the dump bucket, and you don’t spit it on the floor. If you have desires to fulfill you certainly don’t do so at others’ expense, regardless of how rich you are.

On the way back to our room we rode in the shuttle with Courtney, a pretty young woman from Michigan who is the hospitality manager at the resort. She asked the customary scripted questions about our stay and our service and the conversation turned to the display we had just witnessed and how it was possible for this to take place outside of a sty. Courtney told us she had been working there two years and planned on staying with the company a long time. However, she also stated there are times she is embarrassed when asked where she is from and has to say she is American. She said this is due to the behavior and sometimes the outright racial attitudes some Americans have toward the Mexicans in the resort.

This is a shame. We come from the richest nation on earth. Our riches do give us a lot of power. However, they can also give us a lot of grace and the time to be courteous, compassionate and caring. We are sure that after the restaurant closed that night, the staff grabbed a bottle of tequila, headed to the beach and spent the night cussing Americans, all because of Piglet. We don’t really blame them.

Don and Laura

Vacation in Mexico Part 2: Myles with a Y

2005-03-26T07:11:00.000-07:00

The Mayan Riviera has become a place where families can vacation together. It offers a load of things for people of all ages to do, which is great. We see families of all sizes having fun together down there. However, we are always shocked at how some kids behave, or rather at how some parents allow their kids to behave. Many times this bad behavior takes place in a restaurant and our conversation always turns to how we were both raised and how things were when we went to a restaurant with our parents.

First of all, when we were young, going to a restaurant (other than McDonalds) was a very rare treat. Money was tight and eating out was just something people did not do all that often. When we did go out, we were made to dress appropriately and certainly act appropriately in the restaurant. No slouching in our chairs, no throwing food, no loud voices and so forth were the rules. We also talk about how we watched our parents when they went to dinner all those years ago and we both remember how they dressed – moms in dresses, dads in slacks and button down shirts and, most of the time, neckties. We both come to the concluding question, “what the hell happened?”

Now, in many cases the parents seem to not care how they dress or how their kids act. One instance we witnessed was at the Don Pablo gourmet restaurant at the Bahia Principe. A family with three children was taken to their table by the hostess. Dad had on a pair of blue jeans with a faded T-shirt advertising something and a pair of flip flops. Mom and the kids weren’t much better. The restaurant had a dress code that only said men could not where shorts, so technically this family was compliant, but we think they missed the point. Upon being seated, all three kids took out some type of portable video game and, slouching in their chairs to the point of almost slipping out of them underneath the table, they poked at the things until dinner was served. It’s no wonder parents and kids don’t communicate anymore.

But, thank the Good Lord; it isn’t always like this as was the case with a young man we met named Myles.

Seated next to us at Dolce Vita Italian restaurant in the resort was a family of three, mom and dad and a child we guessed to be five years old. He was the perfect gentleman all through dinner, sitting straight in his chair, eating his food with his utensils and visiting continuously with his parents. After he finished eating he stood up and Don asked him if he enjoyed his spaghetti to which he responded, “Yes, very much,” and extended his hand to Don continuing, “Hi, my name is Myles with a Y,” and shaking Don’s hand said, “Good to meet you.”

The conversation continued for quite some time and as we visited with Myles we learned he was not only well behaved and well mannered, but smart and uncommonly friendly. “I live on Cliff Street in Calgary. That is in Alberta, in Canada you know,” he told us. “Cliff Street is just north of Hillcrest Street where my school is so I am able to walk to school from our home. You can come visit us in Calgary any time you would like,” to which his parent looked on with large grins. He told us he was “four and one half going on five,” that his birthday was June 6 and he turned 4 ½ on December 6 (most kids this age would not understand this) and that he liked watching children’s education shows on television. He asked if we had any children and we told him about our grown kids and grandsons Shandon and Ethan and when he asked if we liked television we told him we spent most of our time reading and not watching TV. He told us he liked to read and read a lot, a comment that was confirmed by head nods from his parents.

Myles was a truly likeable individual and it was obvious he was getting good rearing by loving parents that took time with him. He was a true joy and a highlight of our vacation. It was impossible not to contrast Myles and his family with something we watched on the beach the last day we were in Mexico. There was a blonde woman who we had seen on the beach several times over the week who was obviously there alone, so we nicknamed her Miss Lonelyheart. On the last day she took a lounge chair near ours and camped on it all day without moving. Nothing wrong with that certainly, as relaxation is what vacation is all about. But she had a child with her, a son a bit older than Myles that she totally ignored – no, neglected – the entire day. The boy would come ask his mother something only to be brushed off or shooed away. He spent the day on the beach by himself making a fortress out of the coral and rocks he found, ventured to the snack bar on his own to retrieve a hot dog or two and did not get more than one or two complete sentences out of his mother, even though he tried. It was tragic and heartbreaking. We speculated what the problem might be. Did she just lose a husband through divorce or death? Was she ill? Did she just not give a damn? Who knows? But the bottom line is that her behavior with the child was reprehensible and, to us, criminal. If this kid does not start getting some attention from his mom soon he will seek it elsewhere and God knows where that will end up.

Thank God there are parents like Myles with a Y has. The results are clearly evident. We hope and pray Miss Lonelyheart will get it together. We won’t go into our theories of proper child rearing at this point; we only want to report what we saw. Hopefully we will meet Myles with a Y again.

Don and Laura

Vacation in Mexico Part 1: Food and Wine

2005-03-25T12:25:00.000-07:00

We just returned from a wonderful vacation to Mexico where we stayed at the Bahia Prinicpe resort south of Cancun near the Mayan ruins at Tulum. It was a most relaxing and enjoyable week spent lounging on the beach, reading, eating, drinking and sleeping. This was our fifth stay on the Mayan Riviera and, while it was wonderful, we were terribly saddened at how the area has changed since we first visited there in 1995. Since we want our first post here, as well as the majority of our posts about our trip to be positive, we will only say one thing at this point: the once primitive Mexican village of Playa del Carmen now has a Sam’s Club. Enough said.

The Bahia Prinicpe Tulum was great, although incredibly large. So large, in fact, that they have continuously running shuttle busses to move guests around the complex which contains two separate resorts, five pools and a dozen restaurants. We ate the first four nights in the main buffet restaurant for our resort and found the food the best we have yet had, at least buffet-wise, in Mexico. The only drawback was the house wine. Now, we realize that a resort this size, offering all inclusive accommodations cannot afford to serve house wines of any quality, but this house wine was particularly bad. With an oily introduction and a briny finish, we soon nicknamed it Chateau Anchovy, but slugged it down nonetheless.

It was not until our fourth night dining in the buffet that we were visited by one of the Capitans, or managers, who asked about our stay, meals and so forth. We told him about the poor wine and at the same instant we were relating this to him, Don noticed a waiter at another table pouring wine from a bottle. “Where did they get that?” he asked El Capitan who told us the resort had a wine list from which wines could be purchased. We asked for the list which he promptly provided. Since we had already had our dinner we did not order wine that night, but would definitely do so the remaining three nights since we had reservations in three of the different specialty restaurants.

We were relieved - no more Chateau Anchovy!

Friday evening we dined at the Don Pablo Gourmet restaurant and found this to be extraordinary compared to meals we have had in Mexico in prior years. Don had lamb chops in a red wine reduction, Laura had chicken breast filets cut in medallions with a presentation that was beautiful. We ordered a bottle of Louis Latour 2002 Pinot Noir at a low price of $27.00. The wine (especially compared to the Chateau Anchovy) was wonderful, although lacked the forward fruit we have found in California pinots. All-in-all this was a great meal with a good wine. The evening was complete after tiramisu and coffee.

Saturday we ate at the Dolce Vita Italian specialty restaurant which was the best Italian style we have had in Mexico. While not as good as the previous night, it was still excellent. Laura had the lasagna which was made with a very mild and creamy white cheese. Don had gnocchi with a basil sauce and osso. We ventured outside the box with the wine since there was only one Chianti on the wine list and tried a Muga Rioja Tempranillo blend 2001 from Spain that was to die for. This was an “in your face” mouthful of wine with plenty of fruit and tannins and a finish that seemed to last a lifetime. Great, and only $22.00! We also had tiramisu at this restaurant which was much better than the one offered at the gourmet restaurant and also had a pear tart that was very good.

Thinking they could not do any better, our last night’s dinner was at the Fruita del Mar seafood specialty restaurant which was the best of the trip. Since Laura does not eat seafood, she had chicken filets stuffed with camembert cheese and Don had the seared tuna steak with shallots, mushrooms and potato. Easily the best meal we had, we accompanied it with a 2002 J. Moreau and Fils Chardonnay from France made in the French style with no oak and no additional malolactic fermentation. The wine started out rather closed but when the meal was served it really opened up with plenty of fruit and a light, pleasant finish. A good wine at $37.00, much cheaper than we could find it in the states. Topped off with a variety of cream puffs and tarts for dessert, the evening was complete.

We might add that each evening was really finished off with a shared Monte Cristo Cuban cigar on our balcony. It’s a shame we cannot enjoy those here in the states.

So, it is true - we gained some weight on this trip. So what? Isn’t that what vacation is all about?

We will post more about our vacation here later, so check back.

Don and Laura

The Wiggles, etc.

2005-02-27T21:07:00.000-07:00

My Granddad has been a professional musician, and a damn good one, for over 70 years. He started playing the clarinet at a young age and branched out to play the saxophone (tenor, alto and baritone) and also the flute. He was Bob Will’s band leader. (For those of you, who do not know who Bob Wills was; just remember there would be no western swing had there been no Bob Wills.) He spent his wartime years playing in the studios of Hollywood, appeared in many films as a musician of all kinds and played for Jack Benny and others. To this day he practices his scales as if he were a beginner. He can make his clarinet sing, cry, scream, serenade, and hypnotize, play the most colorful Dixie jazz, toe-tapping dance tune or melodic classical music you have ever heard. There is not a thing he cannot play on it and, while he denies it to this day, he can sight read the most complicated piece put before him. And we have not even talked about his sax or flute skills. There is not a thing about music he does not know and I envy him for it. But, there is one thing about music that I disagree with him on and it really does not have much to do with the music, but rather its setting. You see, my Granddad does not like musicals. He has told me more than once that they don’t make sense since no one in the real world breaks out in song like that. Maybe he is right. I wish he were wrong.

My two grandsons, three generations removed from my Granddad, watch and love a television program called The Wiggles. The grandsons are 20 and 13 months old and when The Wiggles come on they are mystified. The Wiggles, for those of you not blessed with grandchildren, are four guys from Australia that dress in black slacks and colored T-shirts and they sing and dance. Their repertoire consists of tunes written for children, probably by them, and some adapted folk tunes. It is simple, toe-tapping and fun. The boys love it and I must admit that after watching it with them the tunes stay in my head for days. These young boys react and are attracted to the music, plain and simple.

I want to tell you about my favorite musical and then touch on my single disagreement I have with my Granddad about music. My favorite musical, done on film anyway, is Paint Your Wagon. This film was done thirty years ago and features, of all people, Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood in lead roles, singing their way through the whole thing. Yes, macho men Marvin and Eastwood of The Dirty Dozen and Dirty Harry fame singing in a musical. And it works. I will not bore you with the details; if you have not seen this go rent it and have a ball. As far as I am concerned, the best tune in the movie is They Call the Wind Maria and takes place as the gold miners are forced into their tents while the rain pours down for days. One of the characters sings this song as he looks out his tent at the rain, singing

Maria blows the stars around
And sends the clouds a’flyin’
Maria makes the mountains sound
Like folks were up there dying

Maria
Maria
They call the wind Maria

Before I knew Maria’s name
And heard her wail and whinin’
I had a girl and she had me
And the sun was always shinin’

But then one day I left my girl
I left her far behind me
And now I’m lost, so gone and lost
Not even God can find me

Who has not been lonely and love-lost and had these same thoughts when the rain drives one inside and secluded from the world? How about the next best song from the film, Wandrin’ Star sung by tough man Lee Marvin himself. Again, I ask, especially if you’re a man, who has not said something like this when looking at his life:

Mud can make you prisoner
And the plains can bake you dry
Snow can burn your eyes
But only people make you cry
Home is made for comin’ from
For dreams of goin’ to
Which with any luck will never come true

I was born under a wanderin’ star
I was born under a wanderin’ star

Do I know where hell is?
Hell is in Hello
Heaven is good-bye forever
It’s time for me to go

I was born under a wanderin’ star
A wanderin’ wanderin’ star

And now, let’s take a look at what I consider the third best song from this musical, I Talk to the Trees. This is sung by another tough guy, Clint Eastwood, who is struggling with his love of another man’s woman. Well, she is somewhat his woman, but you need to see the movie to understand:

I talk to the trees
But they don't listen to me
I talk to the stars
But they never hear me

The breeze hasn't time
To stop, and hear what I say
I talk to them all
In vain

But suddenly, my words
Reach someone elses ear
At someone elses heart
Strings too

I tell you my dreams
And while you're listening to me
I suddenly see them
Come true

I can see us some April night
Looking out across a rollin' farm
Having supper in the candlelight
Walking later, arm in arm

And this tune continues on in this vein, a love song that every man (and probably some women) has sung, at least to themselves at some times in their lives. Let’s look at one last tune from this musical, called Hand Me down That Can O’ Beans. Here are some of the lyrics:

Well hand me down that can o' beans
Hand me down that can o' beans
Hand me down that can o' beans
I'm throwing it away

Out the winder go the beans
Out the winder go the beans
Out the winder go the beans
I had a lucky day

Mary, my Mary, my sweet young Mary
We're going out this evening
Mary, my Mary
I'm gonna take you out tonight

Now, this tune is set during a drunken party the miners have and you just need to take my word for it, it is a scream. The point is that they have worked in the mines for days and need a break, so they have this party that turns into this dance to this tune and eventually a brawl…well, you get the idea.

And this brings me to my original point. My Granddad, the best musician the Good Lord ever breathed breath into, does not like musicals since people do not sing like this in their real lives, in the real world (whatever the hell that is), in their everyday work day. In some sense he is right, people do not do this. People don’t even sing at church, so why would they sing these songs in their daily lives? They just don’t, and I say WHY THE HELL NOT?

You see, my grandsons love The Wiggles because, I believe, there is something inherent in human nature that attracts us to music, that makes us want to sing, that makes us stop the mundane of the day and belt out a melody; to stop all the chaos and confusion and dance to a tricky tune; to break out in song when we are happy, sad, when it rains, when we are in love, when we are broken hearted, when we have a party, when ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, when we need a break.

My Granddad is right on one point; musicals are not realistic since people do not do that. But the point is, we should all strive to prove him wrong. When The Wiggles come on we should stop and sing and dance with them. When we need to sing because we are happy, sad, lost, lonely, in the company of lovers and friends, whatever – we should stop and sing, and dance in whatever fashion we can. Life would be so much more pleasant and happy and, when we are down, so much easier to live with.

Here’s the deal: I have a nice, crisp C-note, yes one Soldier, a Franklin in my wallet for the first person who goes with me on this and breaks out in song right smack in the middle of the day, regardless of the circumstances. Let’s get something started here and get the world to singing. It sure beats the hell out of what we are doing now, and the talking heads on the boob tube!

Don

Buck Passing

2005-02-16T14:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a South Carolina judge sentenced fifteen-year-old Chris Pittman to 30 years in prison for killing his grandparents after jurors rejected defense arguments that taking the antidepressant Zoloft drove the youth to kill. This has become known as the Zoloft defense. I agree with the verdict and the sentence and the jury’s rejection of the defense. This needs to happen more often

Apparently, when the young Mr. Pittman was twelve years old, he shot and killed his grandparents with a shotgun while they slept in their bed. He was a victim of some questionable parenting and had some behavior problems for some time which led to him being put on Zoloft and being under the care of his grandparents. There may be a lot of factors in why this kid turned out the way he did, but the fact is at some point in time he, along with all of us, need to be responsible for our actions.

Those of us who come from the Judeo-Christian background are well aware of original sin. While theologians, ministers and priests argue about what original sin truly is, I think it has a lot to do with passing the buck. Yep, the good old it-ain’t-my-fault attitude that we all seem to have to some degree that goes back to the beginning of creation. Reflect back on the story of Adam and Eve. Here’s what happened. God told them not to eat the fruit of a certain tree. Eve was convinced by the serpent to try some of it and then she gave some to Adam to eat even though they both had been told that doing so was wrong and they knew it. This made them aware of their nakedness so they tried to “cover it up” with some fig leaves they sewed together. (As an aside, I think the whole thing of the fig leaves is a metaphor for trying to hide their wrongdoing and not their naked bodies.) So God, who obviously already knew what happened, asked them about it and Eve blamed the serpent. Adam, then, in the first documented and one of the most blatant cases of buck-passing blamed Eve. Ever since we have been passing the buck for anything we can.

In modern day management science this is called lack of accountability. Accountability is defined as “an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one's actions,” and we are not very good at it. Here are some modern examples:

"I am not a crook.“ Richard M. Nixon
"I did not have sex with that woman.“ Bill Clinton

Luckily we have some good examples:

“The buck stops here.” President Harry S. Truman
“Nuts!“ General Anthony McAuliffe, when asked to surrender at the battle of the bulge.
"Let’s Roll." Todd Beamer, United Airlines Flight 93

President Truman, General McAuliffe and Mr. Beamer faced some very tough circumstances that would had been ripe for buck passing. They could have blamed someone else for their situation and done nothing. Contrast this with Presidents Nixon and Clinton and look at the hell they went through as a result. They spent most of their terms sewing fig leaves together.

After World War II, Adolph Eichmann, one of the top dogs in the Nazi hierarchy faced the gallows at Nuremberg for his war and other crimes. His defense: “I was just following orders.” Following orders costs millions their lives. This became known as the Eichmann defense and like the Zoloft defense it did not hold much water.

The Wyoming Legislature is considering legislation to protect food producers and providers from being sued when the obese blame the food providers for making them fat. I am a bit overweight myself, but I have yet to be tied down by the local Outback manager and force fed a Bloomin' Onion. This is just how absurd things have gotten.

Children are suing parents for raising them wrong and making them turn out the way they did. Students are suing universities because they did not get the job they wanted after graduation. At least one person sued CBS for Janet Jackson’s boob flash during the Super Bowl claiming the scene had forever scarred him. What the hell is wrong with us?

One of the strangest ones I ever heard was about a local man some years ago who sued a local adult book and film shop because of a porn movie he rented. Apparently, the box the film came in promised some footage of a particularly well endowed porn model doing her thing to some great extreme. But the truth was the footage was not as explicit as promised and the man did not get the full “gratification” he expected. The court through out his claim. I call this buck passing too as he blamed the porn shop for his own inability to reach complete “gratification.” And that is all I am going to say about that.

One of the most frustrating things I find as a manager is the seemingly constant buck-passing and lack of accountability some employees have. (It is not limited to staff as some co-managers engage in the same garbage.) At my company, the attendance and tardiness policy was such that abusing the leave policy (sick and other unplanned absences) carried a higher penalty than abusing the tardiness policy. Some staff thought the leave policy too stringent and as a result they crafted a way around it. They figured out that tardy was defined as being late to work, but the definition did not say how late was late. So, if they wanted to call in sick or just take a day off without facing the consequences of overusing, and possibly being accused of abusing the leave time allowances, they determined they could just show up for work 7 hours and 59 minutes late, work one minute and only get charged with a tardy and not an absence. On the surface this does not seem like typical buck passing, but it is. It places the blame for their abuse of the leave time policy on the company and the management. In other words, if the policy were not too stringent I would not have to do this, so it is the company’s fault. It also shifts work to coworkers who have to cover for them during their absence/tardy. In case you’re curious, a new policy now plugs this hole.

The bottom line here, like in the Zoloft case, we have become unaccountable for most anything anymore. This has got to stop. At some point, we are all responsible for what we do. A man named Michael Armstrong once said:

The ancient Romans had a tradition: whenever one of their engineers constructed an arch, as the capstone was hoisted into place, the engineer assumed accountability for his work in the most profound way possible: he stood under the arch.

Things seem to have gotten worse in the buck passing arena, but I think this has been the same since the beginning of time. It is time we all start standing under our own arches. That is what President Truman, General McAuliffe and Mr. Beamer did. Presidents Nixon and Clinton would not stand underneath their own arches because they could already see it all come crashing down. My challenge: build your arches strong before you are called to stand under them, and when called stand proudly and you will have no need of fig leaves.

Don

My Nightmare

2005-02-10T10:36:00.000-07:00

I woke very early this morning from a bad dream that went like this. I was in the Army. In fact, everyone was in the Army. I was in combat as my unit was trying to clear a school building that was occupied by the enemy. Many were wounded or killed and the fighting was terrible. I knew my son had already died in this war and my wife had just been killed. That is how bad it was, everyone was fighting, regardless of age, gender or physical ability. We had just entered the gym area of the school when the shooting became much more intense and a woman (who I work with in real life) jumped on the floor next to me to take cover. In my dream she was in communications and she too had lost her son, who in real life grew up with my son. She was trying to yell at me over the noise of the battle and she was trying to get from me the exact time and location where my wife had been killed since she needed to report that information back to headquarters. The war was so bad that not only was everyone in the military, the military made no effort to recover bodies and just let them lie, only recording the time and place of death since everyone was needed to fight and manpower could not be wasted to deal with the dead and wounded. I awoke suddenly when the woman was shot right next to me.

I laid there in bed and wondered where in my head that nightmare had spawned and as I searched myself wondering why my mind was so capable in its sleep of conjuring up such ugliness I realized that it really is no wonder I had this dream. I had spent some time yesterday reading the news and I could not help but notice what our new Secretary of State Rice was saying about Iran. It seemed to me that she was laying the groundwork for an eventual attack or possible invasion of that country. At least, this is what I came away with after reading her comments. She stated that the United States could not wait forever for resolution of the nuclear issues in Iran and said, "the next steps are in the offing. And I think everybody understands what the 'next steps' mean." She then went on to referring Iran to the United Nations but this has always just been a minor formality to the Bush administration. Add this to the fact that President Bush singled out Iran in the State of the Union message last week and I must ask, does any of this sound a little familiar to you?

Then this morning we wake up to learn that North Korea has nuclear weapons. Diplomats are on this already and Secretary Rice is calling for North Korea to rejoin the disarmament talks. Where will all this lead? What has happened to make North Korea think we are out to get them so that they must defend themselves by building nukes? Is this just some despotic leader’s paranoia, or has there really been something going on that we do not know about?

I am tired of all this. I am tired of hearing how each day dozens more are killed in Iraq. I am tired of hearing how there is a terrorist out to get me hiding behind every bush. I am tired of feeling threatened by some country with nuclear capabilities. I am tired of our rights being trampled on in the name of security which does not truly exist. I am tired of being lied to about a lot of this stuff and I am really tired of how little value our government, and all of us, puts on a human life. How in the hell did we get here and how in the hell are we going to get out?

I will let you analyze my nightmare. I am sure there will be another nightmare tonight.

Don

My Teacher Story

2005-02-06T06:40:00.000-07:00

Last night Laura and I attended a fund raising dinner for the Casper Boys and Girls Club and during the evening a gentlemen gave a motivational talk about what the citizens of Casper need to do to make a difference for the youth of our community. He told a story of why he has reached the level of success he has in his life and he attributes that to the good work of one of his college professors that went a little further and inspired the speaker to achieve and become something more than average. These types of stories are commonplace and they are wonderful tales of how teachers really did something extra in the lives of their students.

My story is radically different.

The most influential teachers I ever had did not inspire me to do anything. They did nothing extra, that was of any good and, in my opinion, were bad teachers. Here is my story.

My 8th grade geography and social studies teacher was Mrs. Hamman. She was nothing out of the ordinary, just a 40ish teacher who did her job each day and did her best to control her students who were driven by newly experienced swells of hormones they did not understand. One day I entered Mrs. Hamman’s classroom only to be confronted by her and accused of writing on my desk the day before. I denied doing this but she persisted and even showed me the desk where someone had written F#&K YOU HAMMAN on the desk in blue ink, but in full English letters and not the symbols I use here. I denied it once again stating I only brought a pencil to class, never a pen, only to be accused, tried and convicted on the spot. I was then sentenced to having to come in and clean the desktops everyday for a month with a rag and a bucket of dirty water one of the custodians provided. To this day I will swear on anything that I did not write that or anything on any desk ever in my life. I really believe this was a turning point for me in school. Until then I had been a straight A student, but after this episode I developed a don’t-give-a-damn attitude and my grades started slipping. I think mom has always wondered why and now she can read this and know. This may seem a stupid reason to become a mediocre student, but I cannot express strongly enough how badly this impacted me. Mrs. Hamman taught me something no child should have to ever learn: that there is injustice in the world and mean people who will do any injustice for any reason that suits them. She unknowingly taught me that we have rights that need to be held sacred if our society is to succeed and that there are people ready to strip us of those rights on a whim. Mrs. Hamman may have truly believed that I had written her the nasty note on the desk and that is alright. Her tyrannical way of dealing with it was wrong and I have never, ever forgotten this.

In 9th grade I had an English teacher named Mrs. Schropfer. Her curriculum started with a reading of the Odyssey and the Iliad and I was given a project to go along with these readings which consisted of writing a paper and presenting a poster on the lineage of the Greek gods. I loved mythology and put everything I had into that project and presented a full sized poster, drawn and printed by hand that had taken hours to complete. My accompanying paper was full of citations from books I had read in the school library about the topic. I was given a C. I was devastated and asked her why and she replied that I should have received a D but she felt sorry for me since she thought I was incapable of doing any better than I had. Things went downhill from there. The next reading was To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee which is one of the best pieces of American literature ever written. But Mrs. Schropfer tried to turn it into something it was not by suggesting the book was full of hidden symbolism and I was just not buying her bullshit. So, I started ditching class and not doing the work which earned me a one way ticket to the guidance counselor’s office. Mr. Starrs was the counselor, a laid back and lovable Teddy bear sort of man, and when he asked me what was going on I told him flat out that Marge Schropfer was full of crap. He told me she had requested a conference with him, my parents and me which was to take place later that day. So, that afternoon I was back in his office with my English teacher, my mother and step-father. It was here that Mrs. Schropfer stated that as far as she was concerned I was uneducatable and not worth expending a lot of effort on and that my parents should begin looking into vocational training for me right now and maybe I could become a carpenter or cement finisher because, as it was now, I would have a hard time succeeding as a simple laborer. I begged to be placed in another class with a different teacher but my pleas were denied and I stayed in the class and somehow earned a C, but I think that was the only courtesy Mrs. Schropfer ever accorded me. Maybe I was a little rough around the edges back then, but uneducatable? Hardly. I know she will never read this and Mrs. Schropfer may be dead, but in case she ever does I would like to point out to her that her former 9th grade English student has three college degrees. My Bachelor and Master degrees were earned Magna Cum Laude and I was Phi Beta Kappa as well as a member of two additional honor societies. This is not banging my own drum, it is fact and Will Rogers said, “If you done it, it ain’t braggin’.” Funny thing is our local electorate put Mrs. Schropfer on the school board years later and did it more than once. It was obvious not everyone had her for a teacher.

The last part of my story took place as a college freshman in the dreaded freshman English class every one who ever goes to college has to take. I was placed in a class taught by Mrs. Larson and she had a unique way of grading. The first week of class she presented a syllabus that had outlined on it just what the student had to do to achieve a grade of A, B or C. She stated if we wanted to get a C and get out we could do minimal work and move on, but the higher grades would take more work. She then made us commit to the grade we wanted and sign a contract stating what grade we were shooting for. The rub was that if a student committed to a certain grade and failed to adhere to the contract and failed to do all the work at an acceptable level, the grade would be reduced to an F and that student would fail. On my contract I wrote down ‘A’ and knew that I had some work to do. I did the work as assigned but my marks were only B and C, falling short of the expectations. For the last big assignment, given only to those who were going for an A, we were given different topics to write about. I was given the opportunity to research and write about Esperanto, the fabricated language that gained some popularity back then and was touted as becoming the world wide, uniform language. Our library had no material on this so I had to do interlibrary loans and obtain information from the societies promoting this language. Laura typed both the first and final draft for me since this was before word processors or computers and I turned in my gem, ready for my first A in college. I was given a D and the comment Mrs. Larson wrote on my paper stated I had no command of the English language and writing would never be an option for me, ever. I requested a meeting and during that meeting she told me that I should change my major (at that time I was an electrical engineering major) since it demanded too much reading and writing, tasks at which I did not stand a chance of having any success at all. And, since I failed to live up to the contract I was getting an F. I pleaded with her and she finally agreed to let me change my contract to a C grade, which she gave me. Like Mrs. Schropfer, Mrs. Larson will never read this and may not even still be alive, but if she ever were to read this I would like to point out to her that later in college I had two of my papers published – yes published, Mrs. Larson. As far as my reading skills, well take a look elsewhere on my web site to learn about that. And one last thing, Mrs. Larson, you were the only professor to ever give me a C in college as I had straight A's until my last year of graduate school when I took a B in an advanced statistics course simply because I was worn out. I earned my A's (and one B). You gave me the C and I earned higher. While my prose here and elsewhere may not be much above the level of “See spot run,” at least I am writing, although she and Mrs. Schropfer did their damndest to make me stop.

This is my story. I did have some truly fine teachers over the years. George Kuntzman, my high school English teacher taught me more about reading, literature and just enjoyment of our language than anyone. And Bob Suedes turned me on to Economics in college. Mrs. Logan was instrumental in publishing a paper I wrote which she submitted for an anthology the college put together. But far more of an impact were the three I have told you about above. In my opinion they were bad teachers and should not have been where they were. Through the good Lord’s graces I was able to turn their negativity into something positive and worthwhile, but I would rather have not had to do that.

Don

Daily Scripture Meditation

2005-01-31T08:52:00.000-07:00

Years ago, well ten years ago to be precise, I had the distinct pleasure and honor to write weekly meditations for the daily scripture readings from the church. This was a ministry and apostolate undertaken by a dear friend, Joachim Nelson who has continued this work until today and made it grown into something much larger that it originally began.

He now has the meditations sent out via email to anyone who wishes to receive them, also posts them on his website at http://www.daily-meditations.org/ and has them posted in blog form at http://dailymed.blogspot.com/ where you are free to take a look at your convenience. These daily meditations are written by volunteers and are not compensated in any way. They do it as part of a personal ministry and for no other reason.

Since I ceased writing these all these years ago, Joachim has continued to re-post some of the meditations I wrote and to this day he receives comments on these and forwards these to me. He has graciously asked that I resume writing for this ministry and I have gladly accepted his invitation.

If you are so moved you may want to take a look at this fine work and if you so desire sign up for his daily emails. May you find something here that speaks to you.

Don

A Miracle

2005-01-31T08:47:00.000-07:00

I told the following story during my mother in law’s eulogy on Saturday. It is not included in the text of the eulogy posted in the previous blog post since this happened after I had written the eulogy and “put it to bed.” Since telling this story, I have yet to be confronted about it by a believer in it, so I recreate it here and will address the naysayers after its presentation.

Saturday morning (January 29, 2005) Laura was preparing for her mother’s funeral and I was sitting here in our little office reading one final time the eulogy I had written. Laura came into the room and had obviously been crying fairly hard. I immediately thought that she was seeking my comfort during this most difficult of times and I asked her what was wrong.

“Do you remember my diamond earrings that I lost?

“Yes,” I responded. Many years ago I had bought a set of diamond stud earrings for Laura for one of our anniversaries. The last time she wore them was five years ago at our daughter’s wedding in Las Vegas. Somehow, the earrings never made it home and we tore apart our luggage, our home and even had our grown children search their luggage and belongings for them in an effort to try and find them. We asked St. Anthony for help in locating them, to no avail. (For you who are not Catholic, it is customary when one loses an item to ask St. Anthony for help in finding it as he is the patron saint of seekers of lost items.) We never found the earrings and St. Anthony was no help. That year I offered to buy Laura another set and she strongly declined my offer for a variety of reasons. So, the earrings were gone.

I looked at Laura’s hand as she opened it and there were her earrings, the very ones I had given her years before.

She looked at me with tears and asked, “Did you buy me another set of these?”

To which I responded, “No, you told me not to and I dropped the idea years ago. Where did you get those?” I asked.

She then told me how she had gone to our bedroom, opened her jewelry box to get a set of earrings to match her dress so she could be ready for mom’s funeral and found a small jeweler’s box on top of all the items in her jewelry box that had never been there before. She opened it only to find her long lost earrings. The jeweler’s box they were in was the exact same box I had wrapped them in years ago when I had given them to her.

It seems that St. Anthony had finally come through. Or was it St. Ann, recently departed mother of my love, my wife?

Laura and I knew at that instant and believe whole heartedly that there was some divine intervention here since the earrings were gone for five years, had been sought high and low without luck, only to return the very day we were to lay Ann to rest.

Since relating this story during the eulogy I have yet to encounter anyone who believes it. Here are the questions and objections people have raised to this story and my rebuttal to them:

Before Ann died she bought some new earrings and had someone sneak them into Laura’s jewelry box (or had me sneak them in.) Well, nice thought but not really possible since Ann had long forgotten about the earrings and certainly had other things on her mind of much larger significance in her last days.

You bought a new set and put them there so Laura would find them for her mother’s funeral. I swear upon my Holy Bible and stake my reputation as a Christian that this is not the case. I never bought another set of earrings, although I had offered, but I respected Laura’s wished not to do so.

They were there all the time and you just never found them. This certainly cannot be true. First, Laura would have remembered taking them out of her luggage and putting them back in her jewelry box. However, she does not keep her valuable jewelry in there, but rather in a secret and secure place, in case our home is ever burglarized. All that is in there is the cheaper jewelry that is easily replaced. Also, we turned the house upside down looking for them. Finally, she has been in that jewelry box countless times over the past five years and would have found them long ago.

Jeri had them all along and brought them home when she came home for her grandmother’s funeral. Also impossible; Jeri is not a thief. Additionally, when we told her the story right after Laura told me she cried and had the look of disbelief and said, “This is too creepy.”

I guess I should not find it hard to believe that others do not believe our story, but it so simply happened to us that we have not choice but to believe it. Faith is a strange thing and St. Paul said it is a belief in things unseen. However, we have seen this small miracle and need no faith to believe it. I wish it was so easy for everyone else; they just need to have faith.

There is an old joke that goes, “Tell a man there are a billion stars in the galaxy and a billion galaxies in the universe and he will believe you without question. Put a sign on a park bench that says ‘wet paint’ and he will have to touch the bench to make sure.” I guess the naysayers need something to touch.

Thanks, Lord, St. Anthony and St. Dooey for the help. As you know, she has not taken the earrings out and probably will not for the longest time.

Don

Eulogy

2005-01-29T07:51:00.000-07:00

I spent the majority of yesterday writing my mother in law’s eulogy. Laura had asked me quite some time ago to do this and I agreed, realizing it would be the toughest thing I have probably ever do, but a tremendous honor at the same time.

The process that this took was really quite fascinating. I started forming what I would say in my head right after Laura asked me to do this and it was not until last week when Ann went into the hospital and, eventually Hospice that I actually started to write it. After the first very rough draft it was perfectly clear that I had not written a eulogy, but rather a laundry list of all the nice things she had done in her life, doctored up with some nice adjectives here and there. I was lost. Then, I really believe a prayer was answered. One night during our hospital vigil I said a little prayer for help on this. As things unfolded and as Ann passed peacefully it occurred to me that my prayer had been heard and one of the last things Ann did on this Earth was direct me how to take this project.

For those of you who cannot attend the services this morning, I post the results here, which will open in a new window.

This is the first time I have done a eulogy. This is far, far, from perfect, but I truly believe it is what Ann wanted me to say. She was a wonderful woman and I had the pleasure of calling her mom for over twenty-eight years.

Goodbye, mom. You are gone from us now, but remain in our hearts.

Truths

2005-01-26T06:32:00.000-07:00

My dad dropped my sister Dori and me an email yesterday reminding us that it was the 35th anniversary of our sister’s death. Darla was about fourteen months younger than me and about the same amount older than my sister Dori. She died when she was ten. Darla was born with a genetic defect called Hurlers Syndrome, or mucopolysaccharidosis.

Here is how this syndrome works. It is an autosomal recessive genetic disorder of a particular gene, which means both parents have to have the recessive gene and both have to pass it on for a child to have this syndrome. If neither or only one parent have the recessive gene it is almost a certainty their children will not be born with this syndrome. If both parents have it then it becomes a genetic dice roll with about a one in four chance of a child being born with the syndrome. Dori and I rolled sevens. Darla’s roll was not as lucky. (Laura and I were tested when we first got married to see if I had inherited the gene and if she has it also. The genes my mom and my dad gave me, one from each parent, were the uncorrupted copies so I do not carry the recessive. Neither does Laura which made the chance of one of our children getting Hurler’s about one billion to one against.)

A child born with mucopolysaccharidosis appears to be normal in every way at birth, but deep within their cells things immediately start to go wrong. Our cells are like little engines that take in oxygen and other nutrients to do their work and create carbon dioxide and other waste products as a result. A category of those waste products are called mucopolysaccharides, or chains of sugar molecules. Carbon dioxide waste is eliminated through the lungs while others like the mucopolysaccharides are eliminated in the urine. Those of us with normally operating cells have many enzymes, one of which is called alpha-L-iduronidase whose job it is to break down the mucopolysaccharides so they can pass out of the cells, into the blood stream to the kidneys and out of the body. Children with Hurler’s syndrome are not able to produce this enzyme so the mucopolysaccharides cannot be removed and just build up in the cells, clogging them over time.

This is what happened to Darla, at least physically. Born a normal appearing and beautiful baby with a load of long black hair, the mucopolysaccharides began building up in her cells, clogging them to the point where her connective tissues became stiff, hard and unable to function. She died of a respiratory problem very peacefully in her sleep.

I say this is what happened to her physically and as you can read I have spent more than enough space on that. This is my defense mechanism, I guess: I have to know the why of everything and have never been able to just accept things as the way they are. I could even go as far as explaining what happened to her as just another occurrence of the second law of thermodynamics in action, but I shall refrain and attempt to move on to my point. I can explain what happened to her physically, but only partially explain the rest of it.

My dad’s email said that Darla was certainly in a better place the last thirty five years and I must agree, at least for her condition. While her life was a constant battle of infection and physical problems, (she never learned to talk, but could walk) she was infinitely loved. My mom and dad loved her completely as did her sister and I, her step father and half brother and sister. She had an extended family that loved her completely also: grandparents and aunts and uncles galore. She was an intimate part of the family in all family happenings and while we knew in the back of our minds there was something wrong with Darla, there was never anything wrong with her. Everyone that encountered her loved her and that was just the way it was.

God has a merciful way of loving children like Darla. While her life was not physically rewarding in any sense, and for the most part a terrible struggle, I don’t think she ever knew any pain. She was given to a family that could and did love her and cared for her until her last breath. She was strapped with the physical trauma of her condition, but never the mental or emotional trauma that comes with life. She only knew love, never hate, heartbreak, loneliness, sorrow, guilt, disappointment or longing. She would laugh at the simplest of things and lacked for nothing, really. It is hard to watch a life such as this and understand this, but God was truly merciful and she was uniquely, but fully alive.

Laura, her family and I have spent a lot of time at the hospital and hospice the past week. Many of you know what I think of hospitals, having worked in one for the past fifteen years. Hospice is another thing altogether. This past Sunday when Laura’s dad made the decision to move Laura's mom (from here on in this post just called Mom) to hospice, it was apparent in his face that he had come to realize she was dying and would not be going home. But let me tell you one thing right away – hospice is not a place for the dying, but the living. Compared to the antiseptic setting of the hospital, hospice is “home” and brings life to the process of dying. It is not a place where people go to die; it is a place where they go to live in dignity and comfort the last hours or days of their lives. It is a place where the family goes not to face imminent death, but to face infinite life in whatever fashion God has led their hearts to believe. I cannot explain it other than this and you will have to experience it yourself. That’s all I can say.

Mom has told us the place is full of angels. She is uniquely, but fully alive. Enough said.

And so I can explain what happened to Darla and Mom in a scientific sense: Darla inherited her condition while Mom acquired hers through aging and her life choices. All systems tend toward chaos and disruption which is a process we cannot stop; that is the science of it. The two people are a contrast, but the Truths (with a capital T) are evident in both of their lives. Darla’s suffering came early as did God’s grace and mercy. Mom’s suffering came late in life, as did God’s grace and mercy. Darla never experienced marriage, childbirth and such nor the emotional pains of living and experienced God’s love in this way. Mom experienced more emotional pain than she would like to remember, but was blessed with God’s love in a whole and loving family, a fifty-five year marriage and all the blessings that come with that and experienced God’s love in that way. These to me are the Truths: there is pain in life, but infinite mercy and love. I do not understand it. It is just the way it is.

I love you and miss you Darla Jean Claunch.

Your big brother Don

This is the only scanned picture I have with Darla in it. My guess is this was taken the summer before she died. From left to right are brother David Browning, me, mom Kim holding Darla, sister Danae Browning being held by my step-father Donnie Browning and my sister Dori Claunch

Proud Parents

2005-01-09T13:48:00.000-07:00

We were welcomed to a nice surprise this morning. In this morning’s edition of the Casper Star Tribune, on page A9 was the listing of students from Casper College who made the Dean’s Honor Roll in the fall semester of 2004. And on that list were Donald T. Claunch and Emily J. Claunch, our son and daughter in law.

Being the parents of a one year old, working full time jobs, attending college and making the honor roll all at the same time is no small feat. They should be very proud of their hard work. We are very proud of them.

Way to go, kids!

Love,
Dad and Mom

The Dead, the Living and the In-Between

2005-01-08T07:37:00.000-07:00

We have all been exposed to a lot of death lately: 150,000 in Asia and Africa and many new deaths each day in Iraq are reported on the news. The past week it seems to have hit much closer to home. My step-father’s brother died the night before last and two other life-long friends of my parents, Ron Broadway and Bob Ford passed on in the last week. Laura and her siblings have been tending to their mother.

We have also been exposed to a lot of life. Grandson Ethan celebrated his first birthday on Wednesday. We watched Ethan for an hour or so last night while the kids went out for a bite to eat. There is absolutely no work involved in this endeavor, only pure joy and living. Like all the other nights we have him we put on some music and piled on the floor and played with him the entire time. At one point, Laura sat back and I noticed some tears well up in her eyes. “What’s the matter, honey?” I asked

To which her reply was, “Just watching and learning.”

“What are you learning?” I asked.

“Simplicity,” was all she had to say and we both had a complete understanding. We spent the remainder of the evening with Ethan and a set of plastic blocks that Laura bought at a garage sale for half a buck and learned from a boy one year, two days, eight hours old, that there is true living in simple things without complexity.

Have you ever known someone who just seemed to be fully alive and living? The ones I have encountered have been people who are “simple.” That term is used as just an adjective and not in a demeaning fashion; they truly are uncomplicated in their lives and they are fully alive. I’ve seen people that work in the hospital over the years who fit this description, and a common thing I have also seen in them is that they usually work in entry level positions in housekeeping, dietary and other “non-professional” jobs. Some of these good people have terrible physical ailments and illnesses, but they never seem to complain, they just go fishing.

St. Francis of Assisi was like this. He started out the son of a rich merchant, bound to be a knight of the empire, but gave it all away for a life of poverty and service to others. His life could not have been made simpler as he owned nothing but a ragged habit, held to his body by an old cord, both of which he tried many times to give to others he felt less fortunate when they were suffering in the cold. But he was fully and completely alive and full of life – he danced and sang with birds and found pleasure in the most mundane parts of life. He found joy in bathing the sores of lepers and in befriending all who were cast out of society.

Some would think these simple people insane and most thought that was true of St. Francis.

For every one of these simple, but fully alive people I know, I also know hundreds (not an exaggeration) that are dead, but somehow still breathing and moving freely around the planet. These are the people that have that hollow look in their eyes and rarely seem to smile and sometimes seem to be driven by some diabolic force. Oddly enough, these folks tend to hold the “professional jobs”and exercise a hell of a lot of control and power over others. They also seem to be greater users of the health care system having all sorts of ailments like hypertension, back problems, gastrointestinal problems, gout, arthritis, depression and sometimes things as bad as cancer. They wear a really large sign around their neck that has the word STRESS written on it that somehow they, themselves cannot see. But they are aware enough of their stress to treat it by self-medicating with alcohol, prescription drugs obtained legally or illegal drugs, in some instances.

And who do we think are insane?

I think the vast majority of us are somewhere in the middle of these two extremes, but there seem to be more walking dead than the simpler but alive. Us in-betweeners seem to vacillate back and forth between the two extremes in an almost manic-depressive fashion and from day to day can seem to others to sometimes be zombies or, at other times to be traveling minstrels spreading joy and song. I think our society pushes a lot of this on us; you know the good old fashion gotta-get-ahead-and-be-more-succesful-than-our-parents mentality? I also don’t think many of us know any better.

A common tenet in all the major religions goes something like this: true happiness is not found in things, but in relationships. It is the pursuit of things that make our stressed out, walking dead friends what they are. It is the pursuit of relationships that will bring us to a fullness of life and happiness. If you have ever been truly in love or spent some simple time with a one year old and his blocks, you already know this.

There has been enough death for us, whether the masses killed in the tsunami, the insanity in Iraq, or the family friends who have gone this past week, or our loved ones who are going a little each day right in front of us. I, for one, have had enough of death and truly believe there is life all around us waiting to be discovered and it is wondering why we cannot see it. Go find it and let everyone know when you do since it is certainly why we are on this planet.

This morning Ethan gets his first haircut. Laura and I will be there, and fully alive. Right now I need to go take my blood pressure medicine and some ibuprofen for my aching back and chase that with some Rolaids because my gut....

Don

New Feature For This Blog

2005-01-01T07:49:00.000-07:00

We know that there are some out there that read what we put on our web log, at least sometimes. So, we have set up an automatic notifier that can email you whenever anything new is posted here. If you would like to be notified by email when something new is posted, just email us and let us know and we will add you to the list.

Once you are signed up, you will get an email notification from our home address.

The email will have a link to the weblog itself that you can click on to go to and post comments or whatever.

There are other ways to get notice of new postings such as using a service such as Bloglines, or by subscribing using XML. We have put links to both these in the information column on the right side of the blog.

We plan on having a lot of fun with this in 2005 so hope to see you around here.

Don and Laura

To Our Family and Friends

2004-12-31T18:42:00.000-07:00

As you begin your New Year's Eve celebration tonight, whether you are staying at home, or venturing out into the fun with other friends and loved ones, we wish you all the best in the New Year. A prayer has been said for your protection tonight and for years to come.

We ask you to pause a moment and reflect on the richness of your existence. By virtue of being Americans with jobs, an income, a home, plenty of food and clean water, you are among the richest one percent on the planet. Tonight while we celebrate in our own ways, whether at a loud party with others, or in our own homes with our children, or just quietly with a book, there are more than 100,000 families throughout Asia and Africa who are spending tonight without their loved ones who were swept away this past week; there are the families of 15,000 Iraqi's that are also without their loved ones tonight who have perished in a war we brought upon them and there are the families of 1500 Americans who died in the war who are without their loved ones tonight. All this suffering and we celebrate tonight - it only takes a moment to ask God for comfort.

We are thankful for you as we are thankful for our vast richness. You are always in our hearts.

Be safe tonight and vaya con dios.

Happy New Year,
Don and Laura

The Best of 2004

2004-12-31T13:15:00.000-07:00

The internet as well as television and the print media are full this time of year with what their authors consider to be the best of 2004. Well, here is my contribution.

I have always been amazed at people who seem to have a calling and spend their entire lives in the work that comes with this calling. I also have notice that these same people seem to have a spiritual side that is so well developed that most of us just don’t get it. Some of these people are obvious - Mother Teresa is an example. The far majority, however labor in near obscurity in the backwaters of the globe and bring a measure of joy and relief to those they serve that, without them, would never shine on these corners of humanity. I would like to introduce you to one of those laborers, Brother Francis Kjeldgaard CCRS.

Brother Francis is a vowed brother of the order of the Holy Cross and serves as the Director of the Holy Cross Food Bank in Casper. Don’t let his title of “Director” fool you. He has no office where he sits and directs the operation. His office is in the store room and distribution center where he works daily gathering, packaging and distributing food to the poor of Casper. For this he receives no salary. He has devoted his entire life to teaching and service to the poor and has been with the Center for 12 years.

For those of you who are not Catholic, allow me to explain, briefly, what a “Brother” is in the church. Brothers belong to religious orders within the church and their particular order will have a specific ministry where they focus their work. These men take the common vows of Catholic religious: vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. However, unlike priests of their orders, they are not ordained and have no priestly duties or responsibilities within the church. They are truly servants of the church and those they serve.

I have the privilege of working with Brother Francis in my capacity as a board member of the Holy Cross Center. I lend a hand dealing with financial, legal and other paperwork matters while Brother Francis does all the real work, nearly all of which is physically demanding. Brother never complains about the weight of the many boxes, sacks and crates of food he moves each day, although his 70 plus year old body would certainly be allowed a complaint or two, but he would never allow it. His devotion to his faith and calling to serve the poor is so deeply engrained within him that he thinks of little else. As an example, I have seen him receive gifts from others for the work he does only to turn around and give these gifts to others who are more in need and not think a thing about it. Once he received two new shirts as a gift and by the end of the day he had given them away and remarked that he had just got a couple “new” shirts at the St. Vincent DePaul thrift store.

Brother Francis labors in joy at 1030 N. Lincoln, where the Holy Cross Center has been located since 1991 when it moved into a donated building at that address. The Brothers of the Holy Cross came to Casper in 1982 through the auspices of Saint Anthony’s parish and from there the Holy Cross Center became a reality with help from Casper churches, businesses and individuals. In 1988 it moved from a one room facility on Durbin Street to a more spacious location at 239 East H Street. In 1990 it incorporated with the State of Wyoming as an entity separate from any church or business, but dependent on the whole community for financial survival.

Brother Francis, with the help of numerous unpaid volunteers brings a measure of hope and joy to the poor in our community. In fiscal year 2003, 12,521 people received food at the center. This year the center is serving an average 1,043 people per month who receive boxes of much needed food, enough to prepare 21,980 individual meals. Of course, none of this would be possible without the great generosity of the people of Casper - and the work of Brother Francis.

He does all this for no salary, no praise or recognition and no recognizable reward. He labors only for a love of others that stems from his deep faith, a faith so simple yet so profound that it denies explanation. It is truly a calling from a higher source.

Brother Francis is the best of 2004 in my eyes. Actually, he could qualify in any year. An inspiration to some, a joy to many and truly a hidden hero, but he would never admit it.

Happy New Year,
Don

Where is God's Love?

2004-12-27T09:57:00.001-07:00

In Gordon Lightfoot’s Song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, there is a line that goes:

Does any one know where the love of God goes
when the waves turn the minutes to hours?

This is a question I asked this morning as I opened the morning paper and read the top headline telling me that the death toll is up to 21,000 from the quake and tsunami that occurred yesterday causing unfathomable damage and death from Indonesia in the east to Somalia in the west. My purpose here is not to discuss the details of this disaster. Those details can be found elsewhere, such as CNN which also includes a map showing how widespread the disaster is. No, like Gordon in his song, I am asking, “Where is God’ Love?”

For me it is just coming down to this: If there truly is a loving, personal God, who cares about me and everyone else as an individual, then why do things like this happen? The minutes of sun soaked beach vacations, and the routine minutes of the daily lives of many have now been turned into hours, days, weeks and months of agony for millions, through no fault of their own. Like Job in the old testament, like countless others who are much closer to sainthood than I will ever be, I ask why does God allow this to happen to innocent people?

Oh, I have heard every explanation there is over the years and, yes, Job tried to explain it all thousands of years ago and the message came to him that us mortal humans can never comprehend (or question) God or what he does, how he does it or why, so we should quit trying to figure it out, sit down, obey and shut up. Sorry, but that just isn’t good enough for me. Why would a completely benevolent God purposely allow Satan to inflict such pain and suffering on Job (and on us all) just to prove his omnipotence? To me, that is mean and playing cruel games on us inferior humans.

I have heard from my beloved Catholic church that suffering is redemptive and in some way an imitation of Christ and what he endured for us on the cross. Sorry, I am not buying that one either - pain and suffering seem to me to be evil to the core and I cannot see a clear path from something this evil to the something as pure as the Almighty.

I have heard that God allows things like this to happen to see how those of us who remain whole react and come to the assistance of our fellow human beings in times of need. Well, this does not do it for me either as there seems to me to be far more suffering in the world than those of us who remain whole can attempt to alleviate, so why add a 9.0 quake and fifty foot high tsunamis to the mix?

I have heard that God allows this to happen as punishment on the non-believers. Hell, it is only a matter of time before some nut who calls himself “reverend” puts on his web site that it is not coincidence that this happened right in the middle of the “pagan” world and strikes right at the heart of Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist populations of Indonesia, India and other nations in the area. In other words, if these victims had been devout Christians, and tithing members of the reverend’s church, this would not have happened. The sad thing is that people like this who say these things can rationalize disaster, even when it happens to them, i.e. “I am a sinner, so I am rightfully being punished.”

This theory does not hold water either since God does not need to use natural disasters to punish us. We have ourselves. We have managed to kill 15,000 innocent Iraqi’s at a cost of nearly 1,500 American lives and $147 billion, a bill which our grandchildren will suffer paying forever. We are good at turning our backs on genocide in Rwanda years ago and now in the Sudan. We are also good at turning our backs on the poor in our own communities. I encourage you to look around for yourself and see the suffering that goes on in your own community and around the world, all at the hands of human beings.

I guess you have figured it out: I am having a spiritual crisis here.

And my crisis does not begin or end with this disaster. I will refrain from blaming God for this and blame it on genetics, but for some reason I have always been a “glass is half-empty” person, and everywhere I seem to look I see suffering. Sometimes it seems to me to be so great it cannot be overcome by any amount of love and concern, but this just may be my weird personality (blame my 12th chromosome.)

I look at our niece Emma. She is 18 months old and was born with a genetic disease called tuberous sclerosis. After multiple brain surgeries she has not yet learned to walk and has a nasogastric tube to assist in her feeding so she can gain some weight. Why does God allow this to happen? And please, don’t tell me she is being punished because of original sin and the inherent defects it brings to all people. Sorry, but a benevolent God would not do this, He would at least pick on an adult like Job.

I don’t have any good answers here. I still believe in an Almighty God that created everything and set this all in motion. He has given us the power to be great creators and he has given us the power to be great destroyers. The one thing I think Job got right was that in our feeblemindedness, we are unable to grasp the true nature of God. We get glimpses now and then, but that is it and it is through our destructiveness that we turn these glimpses into weapons of one sort or another to do our own bidding at the expense of others. Maybe God allows things like this to happen since he is sick of us and has completely left us alone to face the natural consequences a changing universe brings. I don’t know.

My prayers for the suffering....
Don

A Christmas Surprise

2004-12-24T06:50:00.000-07:00

This year we have a wonderful Christmas surprise. Twelve years ago a young woman came into our lives. We hosted an exchange student from Tokyo, Japan named Haruko Komine. Haruko quickly became part of the family and remains part of the family to this day. She still calls us mom and dad and Jeri and Donnie are her sister and brother. She remains our Japanese daughter. I had not seen Haruko since 1997 when Donnie and I went to Tokyo to see her and meet her family. Laura and Jeri had not seen her in ten years when Haruko was last here.

A few weeks back I got a wild idea and in an email to Haruko asked if there was any way she could come home for Christmas. She wrote back right away and said she was on holiday from her classes at Waseda University beginning December 18 and thought it might be possible to come home. After a flurry of emails and some phone calls, we got it all arranged and she made it back home to Wyoming Tuesday evening, December 21.

No one but me knew anything about it. Somehow I managed to keep this all a secret and Haruko surprised her mom (Laura) by ringing the front door bell Tuesday night. Subsequently, Donnie, Emily and Ethan had a similar surprise later that night. We have been surprising family all week.

I just now post this since we have had to keep it all a secret from Jeri and Shandon who fly in today (Christmas Eve) at 4:30. They are now in flight so I am ok to post this. Our plan is to have Haruko meet them at the airport this afternoon.

Haruko has not changed one bit and is still the funny and sometimes quiet Japanese daughter we have always known:

This is the first time in 12 years that all our children will be home for Christmas. This is the greatest gift ever and we invite you to check out all the pictures of our Christmas and this surprise on our Christmas photo album page here.

Merry Christmas!
Don

Yippee kay-yay! Go Pokes!

2004-12-24T06:35:00.000-07:00

Well, well, well. It seems we all need to write Mr. Quiñonez of UCLA once again just to say, “I told ya so!” Remember this guy? He was the “journalist” that thought he could get away with insulting the good people of Wyoming because he thought the Cowboys had no right to be in a bowl game against UCLA (See the blog posts below on this.) Well, if you have not heard, the University of Wyoming Cowboys came from behind in the fourth quarter last night in the Las Vegas Bowl to beat the UCLA Bruins 24 to 21. I have sent my second letter to Mr. Quiñonez. Here is the text of that letter which was emailed this morning:
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Dear Mr. Quiñonez:

You probably don’t remember hearing from me. I am one of the Wyoming Cowboys you managed to piss off a couple weeks ago with your insults leveled at the good people of Wyoming only because you think your sacred Bruins should not have been lowered to the level of having to face our Cowboys in the Las Vegas Bowl.

Well, today I expect to see a picture of your mug on your UCLA web site with several feathers sticking out of your mouth due to all the crow you have had to eat all night. Like I said in my previous letter, you don’t piss on a cowboy’s boots and get away with it. You may not know it, but your insulting article may have had something to do with your Bruins losing. It was the talk of the state and became a point to rally around and I sure it sparked our Cowboys to some degree. Thanks for the help, but we really probably did not need it.

I won’t bother you anymore. I am sure your inbox will be full today of letters from other Wyoming Cowboys saying, “Yippee kay-yah, Bruins. Take that and stick it in your Christmas stocking.” We rodeoed, Mr. Quiñonez, and you didn’t make the eight seconds.

Go Pokes!
Don Claunch
4th Generation Wyoming Cowboy

Twenty Eight to Forever

2004-12-23T11:11:00.000-07:00

Twenty-eight years ago today, we said we did and we still do today. Today is our anniversary, the 28th of an infinite number. When people hear that we got married two days before Christmas, they usually ask, “How could you do that to your parents?” Well, at the time we did not seem to think anything of it. Young love is bliss and, for the most part blind to almost everything around it. Nothing is different today, we still don’t really think a thing about having an anniversary two days before Christmas.

For us, having an anniversary at this time is the perfect thing to do. Our marriage, and each year its anniversary celebration are the start of a new journey for us, a renewal, a commitment to love and enduring affection. Christmas, is the same: a commitment of God’s eternal love for his people, a renewal as the days reach their shortest point and begin to get longer and a celebration of a new journey in the New Year. There could be no better time to celebrate our wedding anniversary.

Usually our anniversary celebrations are low key. Sometimes we go to dinner, but like tonight, we plan on grilling some steaks, sipping some wine and sitting in front of the fire. Our little celebration of love is just that: small, a celebration and eternal love.

“Happy Anniversary, Donnie. I love you.”

“Happy Anniversary, Laura. I love you.”

Why I Am Successful

2004-12-22T16:17:00.000-07:00

I am not arrogant enough to say I have the art of management down to a science. Far from it. However, I have had some measure of success over the past 14 years at Wyoming Medical Center and the major part of that success lies with the people who work for me. Presently I have over 150 staff that report to me through the best eight managers I have ever worked with and that I would put up against any management team in any healthcare organization in the country. I am also privileged to have three others that report to me that are top-shelf professionals beyond compare. The easiest way for me to define our relationship is by the way we relate to each other: I don’t say they work for me and they don’t say they work for me. No, we work together and with each other and only very seldom do we get to that place where strict lines of reporting structure have to be recognized.

The mistake that most managers make is spending too much time kissing the asses of those above them and not enough time with the people who work for them and recognizing that it is due to those who do the work that the manager reaches any degree of success. This is the one part of management I have always tried to adhere to since it works and I always attempt to give credit where it is due. The credit to my success is this excellent group of people who give it up for me and our hospital and I want you to meet them today. They are (in alphabetical order):

Allison, Tumor Registrar. I have known Ali longer than we have worked together since she graduated from high school with my son. She has the rather unpleasant job of recording and reporting malignancies. Ali came to me a few months back with a desire to learn more about our industry which I viewed as an invitation to dump work on her, and I have. And she has not backed down. She takes any project given to her and completes it with incomparable speed and impeccable accuracy. She is now doing work in the IT area doing a special project for our IT Steering Committee. Very smart and always smiling, she is a great addition to our team. Thanks for letting me dump on you.

Cathi, Information Services Applications Manager. Cathi does not know the word “no”. No matter the project or problem, she has always finds a solution no matter what it takes and I dump some horrendous problems on her. A teacher at heart she has the ability to take her solutions and deliver them to people in other departments in a way that is accepted and appreciated. Her staff is completely loyal and continues to deliver for her even in times of budget restraints, impossible projects and difficult deadlines. Her concern for the well being of the organization is genuine and shows in the quality levels she holds herself to. Thanks for trusting me and for giving me the chance to be your CIO.

Cindy, Patient Accounts Billing Manager. Cindy was a staff biller when I came to work at our hospital and has worked her way up. She never turns down a project and somehow seems to juggle a dozen tasks and projects at the same time. This woman has probably forgotten more about Medicare than others in her position ever learn! By far her strength is that she goes to bat and sticks up for her people, recognizing that it is them that gets the work done. And they get it done, with numbers so good other hospital administrators would sell their souls to have numbers that even come as close.

Desi, Admitting Manager. Desi, for me, has always been an inspiration. When Desi and I started working together we both had serious doubts about each other. I doubted her management abilities and she doubted she could work with a jerk like me. I was wrong and she has told me she was wrong too. She has developed into more of a manager than even she thought possible and she has a loyal, dedicated staff that gets the job done. And, she does all this as a single mom with more going on in her personal life than anyone should have to face. Thanks, Desi, for the inspiration.

Gayle, RN, Patient Accounts Auditor. Gayle is new to this position but comes as a transfer from the Information Services department where she worked for Cathi (mentioned above). In her role as an applications specialist there, her attention to detail and ability to convey new concepts to the nursing staff was second to none. She has already jumped into the auditing gig with the same level of attention she gave her computer applications and is also a joy to have around each day. Thanks for staying on my team!

Katey RN, Patient Accounts Auditor. The first time I met Katey she was teaching a class in medical terminology which this old economist found himself in, wondering, “What the hell????” She is a patient with me now as she was then. A wealth of knowledge not only in nursing but in healthcare finance she keeps me out of hot water with the regulators and keeps our operation error free. She gives painless flu shots too. Always ready with a smile, she is a joy to have around. Thanks for the blood pressure checks, Katey.

Ken, ER Admitting Manager. Ken is the new one on the team and is already catching his stride. Starting out as one of Nicole’s (mentioned below) staff, Ken wanted to be a manager and went to work getting there. Much like Nicole, he blew me and the rest of the interview team away and took a tough job with a tough crew doing some of the worst work in the hospital. He has worked hard to get here and will go a long way in his management career. Ken has a trait which, at first seems abrasive: he questions things, a lot. But, that is OK and I have learned that he builds acceptance of difficult ideas through his questioning of those ideas. Keep asking those questions, Ken and thanks for asking them!

Melissa, Materials Management Director. Melissa is a very nice person, always ready to smile and give a hug when needed. She also runs a tight shop that delivers millions of dollars of supplies hospital wide in a flawless fashion, while at the same time managing costs better than everyone’s expectation. I watch her balance the needs of nurses, other managers, administrators and physicians while keeping an even temper and never losing her engaging smile. She just started reporting to me permanently in the last year, and it is my pleasure. Thanks for the hugs, they always come at the right time.

Nick, Medical Records Director. You know the cartoons where the character has a little angel and a little devil on each shoulder telling the cartoon guy what to do? Well, Nick is an angel to me, the cartoon guy. Besides being a highly qualified and successful Medical Records director, he has a moral standard that is second to none on which he stands and which he never compromises. Nick is one who sees when something is wrong and does not hesitate to say it is wrong. Sometimes this causes him a great deal of grief and some unwelcome battles, but he never backs down and sticks with his beliefs. This is a rare thing in the world of management today. Enron would still be around if it had a Nick at the helm. Keep whispering to me, Nick and thanks.

Nicole, Patient Accounts Manager. Nicole was one of those hidden treasures. When she interviewed for her management position I , as well as others on the interview team were blown away. She may be one of the more intelligent people I know and a delight to have on our team. Her decisions and projects are thoroughly thought out and I have found she has a unique ability to not say anything until her thoughts and plans are thoroughly thought out and ready to lay on the table. She manages a tough group doing a tough job and gets it done – all the time. She is my sounding board for many things and always comes clean with me when I need her too. Thanks, Nic.

Shawn, Information Services Technical Manager. This man is a technical wizard and there is no technology he cannot discuss in great depth. However, he has managed to bridge the gap between the techie geek and the Average Joe and can communicate on any technical issue with anyone, even those not technically trained. Like Cathi, his co-manager, he is a natural teacher and can teach on any level and enjoys doing it. This blog is just one example of his willingness and patience to instruct. He has brought a non technical CIO (me) to some small level of technical understanding. I hope one day he can learn something from me! Oh, and thanks for the lessons on VPN's!

These are the people who make me look good. These are the people who make me successful. These are the people that make it possible for me to write this blog, travel to see my grandson and live a life with comforts beyond imagination. These are the people who make my family’s Christmas possible. These are the people I say “thank you” to and wish the very best for the holidays. Ali, Cathi, Cindy, Desi, Gayle, Katey, Ken, Melissa, Nick, Nicole, and Shawn – thanks for all you do for me, for Laura and our family. You are all the greatest.

Merry Christmas,
Don

Intelligence Overhaul?

2004-12-17T10:26:00.000-07:00

I never thought I would say this, but in the not too distant future I may be siding with the ACLU on something. Today President Bush signed into law a new intelligence bill, 536 pages of legislation that includes a new Director of National Intelligence position as well as changes in luggage inspection, border patrol and, this is the part that gets me, mandates for driver’s licenses that outline what information must be contained on the license.

Now, my problem is not what information is on a driver’s license, but in two other areas. First, what will be done with that information and, second, isn’t the issuance of driver’s licenses a state prerogative?

Let’s tackle the first issue. The new law says that the licenses must be “machine readable.” In other words, through a magnetic stripe or other method anyone who requests your license such as the TSA, police, the grocery store when you write a check or your local pub can quickly access and store the information on your license electronically. This information can, and I venture to guess will be stored in some database somewhere and my concern is for what will this information be used? More importantly, what other information stored in other databases will be correlated with information on your driver’s license and what will be the result? There just seems to me to be a lot of room here for abuse.

This whole problem with privacy and the gathering, storage, correlation and use of personal information is a problem now, and nothing new with the driver’s license mandates in the intelligence legislation. I won’t go into details, but encourage you to read security expert Bruce Schneier’s recent comments on this here.

The second problem with this driver’s license legislation concerns the tenth amendment to our Constitution. This is the last amendment in the group known as the Bill of Rights, and it states:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Now, I am not a constitutional lawyer and certainly no specialist on such things, but this legislation seems to contradict this amendment. And here is where I see potential problems. Let’s say the state where you live does not have the funds to change its driver’s license system, or does not completely enact the requirements, or stands up to the Federal Government and says the state will not comply, then the license they will continue to issue you may not be valid and acceptable in other states. Also, it certainly won’t be accepted by any Federal agencies so you can forget about flying anywhere, getting a passport or buying stamps with a check at the Post Office. If there are any constitutional lawyers out there reading this, I would love to hear your comments on this.

Is this leading us to a national identification system? I hope not. That would be just another infringement on our freedoms that could have horrible consequences. It smacks of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc Countries and many third world dictatorships. You may say, “Never in the United States,” and I hope to God you would be right. We need to keep an eye on this and everything that is happening to our freedoms and rights in this country to make sure we do not allow any further.

Don

Don't Piss Off a Cowboy

2004-12-14T18:23:00.000-07:00

OK, I have written my letter to Mr. Quiñonez of UCLA who thinks he can get away with insulting the good people of Wyoming. Here is the text of that letter which was emailed tonight:
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Dear Mr. Quiñonez:

Well, I don’t know how, but you managed to aggravate around a half a million people, the entire population of the fine state of Wyoming, all at the same time! And how did you manage to do that? Oh, I know...you‘re from California! (I am referring to your recent online article Wyoming matchup raises the question: Why?)

Now, I won’t stoop to the levels you did in your article and bad mouth the state of California. No, California needs no help outside its borders making a fool of itself. But my Uncle Johnny, a tough old poke that broke more horses in his life than California has traffic jams always said, “you never piss on a cowboy’s boots.” You, sir, have pissed a whole river up here in old Wyoming. I guess if you want to get into a pissing match with a few cowboys, the rodeo is on.

Wyoming is a state where freedom and ruggedness are core values that our citizens will never surrender. We have a true citizen legislature that meets only forty days a year. These are hard working people that love this state and volunteer their time in service. As a result we have the lowest tax structure in the nation and, since they only meet 40 days a year, they do not have time to concoct every taxation scheme possible, unlike other bankrupt states in the union. Oh, and one more thing. Our Governor is a native of the United States, and Wyoming. He could be President of the United States, if he wanted to. Don’t get me wrong, we love Arnold here in Wyoming. We just can’t figure out why he wanted that job since you handed him a no-win bankrupt problem that California may never get out of.

If Wyoming is such a bad place, Mr. Quiñonez, why are so many Californian’s taking up residence here? Well, taxes are certainly one thing and maybe it is a flight from the astronomical real estate prices and the general cost of living they have in California. Maybe it is air. You know, people need good clean air to live and we have plenty of that. Maybe it is the traffic. On our freeways we can actually drive the speed limit without any traffic jams or this idiotic stop-and-go stuff you play out there in California. Maybe it is the wildlife. Yes, we have live deer and antelope along our freeways and highways, not the remnants of California wildlife that seems decorate your freeways and highways from one border to the next. We call that litter in Wyoming. Maybe it is manners. Yes, we still call each other “sir” and “ma’am” here and we tip our hats to the ladies. Call us old fashioned, but a little respect will get you a helluva long way in Wyoming. If Wyoming is such a bad place, why do over 7 million tourists come to visit us each year?

Let’s see, I love California wine and spend a lot of my hard earned dollars on it. Tell your friends in the wine business to keep up the good work. Gotta tell you, though, California wine ain’t nothing without a good fire-grilled, Wyoming grown beef steak to go with it.

You want to talk about football? Well, here in Wyoming we play real football, outdoors in the snow at 7,163 feet above sea level. Our boys play in those conditions all year and still have the energy to bust a bronc now and then and tip their hats to the ladies. We might not win the football game, but we are proud as hell that they are there. They earned it, unlike your California and PAC-10 teams that you think should be in a bowl by default. My brother is a former University of Wyoming Cowboy football player and he feels he has had his boots pissed on and is thinking of vacationing in California and wants to show you how to dog a steer, or a sports writer since a steer may be hard to find in California.

And speaking of football, what kind of a team name is the “Bruins?” Isn’t that some kind of bear? Well, come to Wyoming and we will show you two kinds of bears, the grizzly and the black bear, each of which would scare you to death. Seriously, they are worse than anything California can even think of coming up with, but here in Wyoming we have learned to get along with them and admire their strength and beauty. That’s how Wyoming people are – we get along with most anyone and anything, as long as they don’t piss on our boots.

I too am a University of Wyoming Cowboy, holding both a Bachelor’s and Master’s from that fine institution. Guess what? I am the Chief Information Officer of the largest healthcare organization in the state and, yes, I am from Casper and can use a computer. I have a staff of 23 information technology professionals that have had their boots pissed on and they would like to take you to a branding sometime and they need a test subject. Perhaps you would like to volunteer? Oh, by the way, you probably did not know it, but an education at the University of Wyoming is guaranteed to all who want it by our state constitution. It is also very affordable and our students excel in academics as well as athletics. Our journalism program at UW turns out professionals who still call our fellow Wyomingites “sir” and “ma’am” and tip their hats to the ladies. Like I said, respect gets you a helluva long way in Wyoming.

Mr. Quiñonez, you have every right to cheer on your beloved Bruins and I encourage you to do so. But, you do not have the right to insult the hard working people of the Great State of Wyoming. You owe us all an apology and, when accepted, you will be welcomed around our campfire and treated to hospitality that you will find no where else in these United States. I wish your Bruins the best and they may beat our Cowboys up pretty bad, be that as it may. But no state is more proud of their team than Wyoming. And no citizens are more proud of their state, their way of life and their accomplishments than those of us who were born and live in this fine place. Come see us sometime, I promise I won’t get the branding iron out.

Sincerely,

Don Claunch
4^th Generation Wyoming Cowboy
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Now, it is up to all of you. Send this guy your thoughts and tell him exactly how we do things in old Wyoming! (His email address is on the previous post.)

Are All the Assholes in California?

2004-12-14T15:26:00.000-07:00

This will certainly not be the last you hear about this from us, but we wanted to get this out to everyone as quickly as possible. Check back, I can see a good blog post coming from this one.

Our sister Karla emails us:

If you were having a relatively good day and your blood pressure is stable, then you won't want to read the article that is attached to the following link. This sports writer (if you want to call him that) from the Daily Bruin has slammed UW and the great state of Wyoming. Check it out at:

http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?id=31279

Make sure you read the very last lines of the story in italics regarding Casper, Cheyenne, Cody and Laramie. If you are so inclined his e-mail address is gquinonez@media.ucla.edu. Send him some fan mail.

This guy is an asshole. Let him have it, Wyoming and pass this along to all proud Wyomingites!

Some Good Things

2004-12-12T08:46:00.000-07:00

OK, we realize we have been doing my share of bitching around here lately, so it is time for some good things. Here are a couple:

You can click on each photo to see a larger image, or you can click here to go to our Christmas photo album.

For those of you who may not know, these are our two grandsons. (Not the jolly old guy with the beard!) And these are two of the best things in the world. It is because of these two boys that we are really looking forward to Christmas this year. Christmas had gotten for us to be a time of rushing, debt, over eating, over drinking and just general weariness. Last year, for instance, in the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas we only had three of four nights home alone. In years past, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day had been nothing but running from one place to another to make sure we got to see all our large families and spend time with them all. Things are different this year.

Christmas is all about God the Father giving us the ultimate gift in His Son. We have the added gift this year in the gift our children gave us, our grandsons. We have not seen Shandon around the tree yet this year (he and his mom get home late Christmas Eve) but we have seen Ethan a lot. He is fascinated with the tree and there is a spark in his eye that shows it is more than the simple fascination all babies have with bright, shiny objects. He knows this is a special time and that there is something special going on. We are sure Shandon will be the same way.

Yes, there will be over eating and too much to do at Christmas, but that is ok. We will be able to watch the wonder in these two boys' eyes at all that is going on and for the whole thing they will be the center of attention, as it should be.

Merry Christmas!

Another Stupid Lawsuit

2004-12-11T10:08:00.000-07:00

Working in healthcare I see and hear about lawsuits all the time. Some seem to have merit while others are purely frivolous. It’s the frivolous ones that amaze me more than the others. There are many times I find myself reading about one and just screaming back at the newspaper, computer monitor or whatever I am reading it on. That happened this morning again.

It seems Wal Mart is getting sued. This is probably nothing new. But the reason they are being sued brings a new level of idiocy to the civil legal realm. According to an internet story (read the entire thing here) Wal Mart is being sued by Trevin Skeens of Brownsville, Maryland because she purchased the new CD from the band Evanescence only to learn the CD contains a song with the “F” word on it. The plaintiff is seeking to have the CD removed from the stores and is also seeking damages of up to $74,500 “for each of the thousands of people who bought the music at Wal-Marts in Maryland.” $74,500? Where did this amount of damages come from?

Give me an F’ing break! This may be the pinnacle of stupidity.

I will give this plaintiff credit for attempting to protect her 13 year old daughter. But the fact is she is bound to hear much worse, and a lot more of the “F” word and other words on her school playground, the local arcade or even in the mall where she probably hangs out with her friends. If she is really going to protect her kid she also needs to sue all the television networks who will expose her daughter to 200,000 acts of violence, including 40,000 murders and countless sex scenes, some reaching soft-porn levels on prime time by the time she reaches 18 years of age. And these are only the fictional or re-enacted acts of violence. How about the numbers of mutilated Iraqi’s she can see on the nightly news? The bottom line is neither she, nor you and I can completely protect our kids from exposure to bad words, or bad scenes on the tube.

The suit states that Wal Mart “promotes itself as a seller of clean music” and has “deceived customers” by selling this CD. The plaintiff has started her own campaign, with the help if her lawyer who plans to "take this case national, even if that means going state by state," to protect innocent consumers from exposure to these bad things.

And this us pure bullshit. If she is that offended, take the CD back and get a refund. If she does not want to hear it, then don’t play it. Likewise, if she (or anyone) does not want to hear, see or read something they feel is offensive, then turn the damn thing off, or trade the book in at your local book exchange. Lawsuits like this only drive the costs of everything up for all consumers and need to stop.

Wal Mart has plenty of money so does not need a defense fund for this. But if they did, my checkbook would already be out.

Don

My New Calling

2004-12-10T06:51:00.000-07:00

I think I am going to quit my job and go to law school. Yep, I think I may have found my true calling in constitutional law. Hell, this will be easy since our government has stripped much of the constitution of its power and the protection it used to provide to all citizens of this great land. So, since a lot of it has been abolished I won’t have much to learn.

Seriously, we need more good constitutional lawyers who are willing to take on the tyrannical assault on our rights, freedoms and protections that are being chiseled away in ever larger chunks on a regular basis. Take the instance of what John Barlow is going through over what is clearly an illegal search of his luggage. (Read his excellent blog post on this here.) Now it seems Mr. Barlow had some illegal substances in his checked luggage, and my point here is not to argue the pros and cons of using such things, but to point out how his rights as a United States Citizen were clearly violated.

Mr. Barlow should be protected under the 4^th amendment to the constitution. (Remember the constitutional amendments? The first ten of which are called the Bill of Rights and Rights are something Thomas Jefferson told us 230 years ago were unalienable, or in other words cannot be surrendered.) The 4^th amendment states

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Pretty straight forward, isn’t it? Going through Mr. Barlow’s checked luggage and finding anything other that explosives and charging him with illegal possession of a controlled substance as a result is unconstitutional. Bottom line, without good cause you cannot be searched without probable cause resulting in a warrant and then can only be searched for specific items stated in the warrant.

As a people, we have voluntarily surrendered some of our rights in direct contradiction of Jefferson in the interest of “National Security.” Let me give you an example of how this works. I save my hard earned money for an overdue vacation to taste some fine wine, eat some good food and see some old friends. The journey starts out on the wrong foot with an encounter with the local TSA officials. Since I was ready for my vacation, I dressed for the occasion in a pair of shorts, T-shirt and athletic shoes, none of which had any room covering my rotund frame to conceal anything that could be considered a threat to national security. But, I submit to the regular emptying of my pockets and the walk through the metal detector in the interest of national security. However, the TSA official, who I am sure has had years of extensive training protecting national security, found it necessary for me to be physically searched, in other words patted down or frisked, a chore that included removing my shoes and turning the waist band of my athletic shorts inside out. When I asked why I was subject to this I was told it was because I had not removed my shoes when going through the metal detector.

Now, this raises some serious questions for me. First, don’t the metal detectors work well enough to detect metal in ones shoes? If they did, we would not have to remove them. Since they don’t, why don’t they make us take off everything? Second, how does not removing my shoes warrant a pat down, something I venture to say is a violation of my 4^th amendment rights to improper search? The bottom line is that the searches and so called security that the TSA is doing are ineffective and are unwarranted invasions into our privacy and do nothing to prevent threats to national security or the safety of those on airplanes and on the ground. Sure, they throw up some barriers, but anyone with any creative imagination can figure out ways around these barriers.

Back to my original point. Not only have we voluntarily surrendered many of our rights under the 4^th amendment, but I would argue that as a people we have allowed the surrender of rights under the 5^th, 6^th and 8^th amendments as well which covers such things as not having to testify against oneself, right to a fair and speedy trial by jury and protection from cruel and unusual punishment. And, I am sorry to say, we the people have allowed our elected officials to do this.

Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence that when our unalienable rights are violated, the people have the right to abolish the government and start anew. I am not advocating that at all since we have the perfect constitution to protect us, if we just let it. And that is why good people who are willing to work a lot pro bono need to become good constitutional lawyers and use the framework this nation’s founders gave us for addressing violations of our basic rights.

Anyone want to donate to my scholarship fund?

Don

PS – Merry Christmas

The Christmas Rush

2004-11-27T07:46:00.000-07:00

I saw, again this year, the news footage of the people lined up outside stores and malls waiting for the doors to open the day after Thanksgiving, some at 5:00 am. I don’t know whether I should feel sorry for these people, be angry or embarrassed. I feel sorry for those whose lives revolve around consumption and getting a good bargain, regardless of the sacrifice. I am angry that our society has gotten to the point that consumerism and consumption has become a modern day idol and, like most idols, needs sacrifices made to it constantly and in ever bigger proportions to be satisfied. I am embarrassed as this is how many people in foreign lands see Americans – as greedy, selfish consumers, with too much money to spend, muscling out our friends and neighbors so we can get the best deal the earliest.

Now, I am all for a healthy economy and even more for giving out of the goodness of our hearts to show our love for others and genuine concern for those less fortunate than I am. But I am really opposed to this rampant consumption for consumption’s sake that does nothing to build for our future since it discourages saving and does not build infrastructure needed to support a huge economy over the long term. But, enough of the economics lecture.

Our culture is sick in this regard and buying to the point of going into debt with high interest credit cards is just one very visible symptom of our illness. I want us to get better, so here is what I am proposing. Please do not get me anything for Christmas and I, in return will get you nothing unless it is something you absolutely need to get by. Instead, take a few bucks and drop it in the Salvation Army kettle and say a little prayer for me at the same time and I will do the same for you. Keep your credit card in your wallet and send a check for twenty bucks to the local soup kitchen or food bank in my name and I will do the same for you. Stop by the house a couple times this season for an egg nog and a visit and I will stop by your place for a cup of cheer also. Instead of spending a whole day at the mall, volunteer that time to a homeless shelter, school for the disabled and handicapped or a senior center. The gift of yourself you will give at these places is far more valuable than any amount you can spend at the mall. Sit down at my table on Christmas day and take a minute to reflect on what happened two thousand years ago that started this whole thing, and whether you are a Christian or not, realize that something tremendously important happened that changed the face of humanity forever. Then, we will feast together and toast one another’s health and happiness and show each other true love, the way it was intended to be. Make a gift of yourself this year – that is what we really need to heal.

Merry Christmas,

Don

Eat a Steak: Boycott the Press

2004-11-23T17:49:00.000-07:00

If I were a cattle rancher, I would sue every journalist, TV news show, and anyone anywhere that reported on the “suspected” mad cow scare last week. Once again, the press has scared the hell out of Americans and the American commodity exchanges by inappropriately reporting an “expected” case of mad cow disease. Check out this just released news clip from Reuters (full text here) which states “An animal suspected of having mad cow disease was given a clean bill of health in a second round of sophisticated testing, the U.S. Agriculture Department said on Tuesday….” The report says cattle prices soared after the news. It does not tell you how far they dropped in the initial report last week. Can you imagine trying to run a business with one iota of long term planning with the press whip-sawing your market like this? This is just pure nonsense and irresponsible reporting my friends.

Gimme a break! The chances of an American getting mad cow are presently zero, zip, nada, none, nothing…. Get the message. You have a larger chance of getting hit by lightning twice in the same year in the United States as you do getting mad cow. So eat beef, relax and take any and all reports from the press with a grain of Adolph’s Meat Tenderizer.

Now, back to my Martini (Laura sure shakes ‘em good!)

Don

Thanksgiving

2004-11-23T13:44:00.000-07:00

This post is my daughter Jeri’s fault. She emailed last night and said, “Hey dad, what’s up? You have not posted to your blog in days and have not updated the web site.” Well, I had already started writing the two previous postings, so she is to blame for this, the third one today.

Which leads me to think of Thanksgiving and the things I am thankful for. I won’t make this another standard list of things I am thankful for, since such lists are no-brainers in that the items on them are one everyone’s list. (And if they are not on some individual’s list, that person is insane.) Who is not thankful for their health, their family and such?

Since Jeri has a good sense of humor, she should appreciate this list. This year I am thankful for (in addition to regular items on the standard list):

Wine yer Waist (Whatever happened to Valeria?)
Dollar Wine (do the dance!)
Trippin’ Billies (bet ya can’t name the band)
Dinosaur bones (yes, the ones that were alive once)
The Managers in my departments at the hospital that make my unbearable job bearable and, for the most part rewarding and all the time educational
Liz Ott (the accounting professor that Jeri and I both had)
Narita International Airport (both arriving and leaving)
It’s Suntory Time! (Kanpai!)
Yeast (go figure)
Mad Max
Maverick
Big Blues Eyes
Old Blue Eyes (Dancing in the kitchen...)
Big Brown Eyes
Swanson
EJ (the lineage goes on)
Spezia’s Restaurant
777
Nini

Happy Thanksgiving!
Don

Great Food, Great Friends

2004-11-23T10:25:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday evening we had the delightful pleasure of dining with our friends Craig and Patsy Smith. and Craig’s parents. This was no ordinary dinner. No, it was extraordinary. Executive Chef Matt Sissman of Casper prepared a six course meal that he worked on all week that was, without a doubt the best feast we have ever had. Craig selected six wines, one for each course, selected to perfectly match the course.

The evening began with a marinated tuna spoon which was a large Chinese style soup spoon with small bits of marinated tuna. Laura is no fan of raw fish but she enjoyed this quite a bit. The courses that followed were:

Appetizer: Confit Duck tartlet with orange saffron beurre blanc (shown here) (served with a ZD Chardonnay that was a fat and in-your-face mouthful beyond any Chardonnay we can remember)

Pasta: Mint potato gnocchi with braised lamb and morel mushrooms (served with a Barbera)

Salad: Romaine lettuce and lemon, olive oil and fresh ground pepper

Entree: Braised pork shoulder in white bean and artichoke heart ragout with warm herb ciabatta (with an Acacia Pinot Noir the was exquisite)

Dessert: Lemon trio – Lemon curd, lemon creme brule and lemon shortbread (paired with a Robert Mondavi Winery Sauvignon Blanc Botrytis dessert wine – yummy!)

All topped off with coffee and fresh made biscotti.

Our advice to anyone who gets a chance to do something like this is to do it and drop anything that may conflict with it. It is a treat that one rarely experiences. Thanks to our good friends for including us in such a wonderful treat!

Divided Nation

2004-11-23T09:45:00.000-07:00

I heard on the radio early this morning that polls show the nation believes it is more divided now than ever. God, how did we get this way? We don’t need any polls to tell us this as the evidence is all over the place from watercooler chat to debates in Congress. The war is certainly the major source of division and, while it boggles my mind that half that nation still thinks we did and are doing the right thing over there, this division source will continue for a long time with no end in sight – to either the war or the divisiveness it brings.

It was interesting to note how during the election this thing started getting personal real quick. When the draft monster raised its ugly head from decades of slumber, outrage from both sides was the result with both camps telling us how the other guy was a bigger threat to resurrect the draft than their guy. The only thing this whole debate proved was how good Americans are at getting certain folks to do our dirty work for us. Fact is, with an all volunteer military, we send those to fight our ugly wars who are in some sense less desirable, social outcasts or those we (purposely or not) marginalize on a daily basis. Going back to early Viet Nam we have sent volunteer armies of petty criminals, people from the intercity where high unemployment drove them to the military (read minority here) and other marginalized citizens to fight questionable wars fought over questionable ideologies. It is not until a draft appears, or at least the threat of one, that those of us who are in the upper one percent of income and wealth worldwide begin to squirm and eventually cry foul. I am certain this is what happened during the election.

I have always been against this war, but was tolerant of it and my President’s decisions until the early declared victory turned out to be false and hundreds more Americans and thousands more Iragis lost their lives. Then they started talking draft? “Hell no!” was my response since now it would personally effect me and my family, many of which are draft eligible.

Here is a way to stop the draft and future wars that have no purpose. Let’s institute mandatory government services for ALL American citizens when they eighteen years of age. No student, conscientious objector or other deferrals – everyone goes in. All train with the military, but they also train and work to clean highways, work in the intercities where help is desperately needed, staff soup kitchens, hospitals, homeless shelters and a variety of other social services providers while all the time they are subject, boy and girls both, to be called up to fight in the case of war. No exceptions, war breaks out EVERYONE goes. Under this system it would take our politicians a helluva long time to decide to enter a questionable conflict, with their own sons and daughters in the line to be shipped out. And, I am sure, there would be no Irags in our future.

Don

Movie - "Ray"

2004-11-13T16:14:00.000-07:00

Wow, take three hours out of your day and go see "Ray" starring Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles. This movie is extraordinarily well done and Foxx's performance is certainly oscar material. The soundtrack is all original Ray Charles and it is edited to prefection. There are no superstars in this picture, but dozens of solid performances that should not be missed.

What a great way to spend a cold Wyoming November afternoon!

Election Reflection

2004-11-13T10:01:00.000-07:00

I have always been a Republican, and had voted for the Republican presidential candidate every four years since voting for Ronald Reagan in 1980 in the first election I was eligible to vote. I tend to be conservative, but consider myself to a moderate. I am generally against taxation and irresponsible government spending that stifles growth and the creation of wealth and infrastructure that guarantees prosperity for our grandchildren and beyond. But that is a topic for another rant. I am pro life, but also realize that the law allows abortion and it is not my place to stand in the way of others who freely choose to act within the confines of the law. I have no connection with the religious right, the moral majority, Pat Robertson or any of the other do-gooder organizations that call themselves "Christian" but never seem to read the bible themselves. Didn’t Jesus say, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”?

With that, I have to admit for the first time ever I left the ballot for the presidential election blank this time.

And I cannot believe President Bush was re-elected.

But, what other choice did moderate conservatives like me have? (Message to democrats – give me a viable slate of candidates and you have my vote.)

Thomas Jefferson said, "A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither." I am afraid we are in for more of this the next four years. Just this week the Transportation Safety Administration chiseled away a little more of our liberty and privacy by moving ahead with "Secure Flight," where, according to the Associated Press, “the Transportation Security Administration will screen for possible terrorists by comparing passenger data with names on two government lists….The data - known as passenger name records, or PNR - can include credit card numbers, travel itineraries, addresses, telephone numbers and meal requests. The latter can indicate a passenger's religion or ethnicity.” (See the entire story here.)

What business is it of the governments what credit card I used to buy my ticket, or what my religion or ethnicity is? C’mon, enough is enough.

So, we have another four years of living in fear to look forward to. And we are all to blame: the people who re-elected him and the democrats who fail to give us decent candidates and all of us who allow our rights and liberties to be taken away, bit by bit.

Don

Wine Vacation - Too Many Wines, Too Few Days

2004-11-06T09:23:00.000-07:00

We would love to be winemakers or vineyard owners. This would be a truly rewarding vocation since it encompasses so many disciplines. To make and market good wine, one must be a farmer, soil specialist, handyman, meteorologist, climatologist, chemist, conservationist, plumber, carpenter, connoisseur of fine food and drink and the list goes on. (Feel free to add more specialties needed in the comments section if you think of any.)

Since we cannot be winemakers we settle on being wine drinkers and each year we take a fall harvest trip to the coast of Central California to see old friends, drink favorite wines, find some new favorite wines and eat some tremendous food. This year we had the added pleasure of seeing our old friends Tim and Keith who now live in Palm Springs (actually 1000 Palms). We have posted the pictures of our trip on the photo album page.

After being properly abused by the TSA staff at the Natrona County International Airport (hint: drive to and fly out of Denver next time) we made it to the desert for a couple of days with Tim and Keith. From there is was up the coast to the San Luis Obispo and Paso Robles wineries and a visit with another old friend named Tim.

The San Luis Obispo wineries we visited were:

Laetitia - nice Pinots and a very good Sauvignon Blanc Laura fell in love with (and ordered a case!)

Kynsi – nice wines from a family run venture

Domaine Alfred – superb Pinots, but they do not ship to Wyoming (sigh!)

Edna Valley Vineyard – Good wines, reasonably priced

The Paso Robles Wineries we visited were:

Hunt Cellars – very good wines with a Petite Sirah that is extraordinary and a Barbera that is unlike anything we have ever tasted

Castoro Vineyards – also good wines, but nearly too many to try

Eagle Castle Winery – a new one in the area with a pretty good Merlot. (Well, good enough we bought a case)

Justin Vineyard and Winery– an old favorite that is now carrying great cheeses from all over. We could have stayed all day eating cheese and sipping Isosceles

Adelaida – another old favorite with a new tasting room. Had lunch there with Rocky the winery dog

Windward Cellars – this is a new winery with a new twist: they only make Pinot Noir, a grape not common in the area. We were able to taste their Pinots from each year from 99 on and found them to be lucious. We joined their wine club as a result.

Midnight Cellars – another winery that we had visited before, but found their wines to be mediocre. However, this time they had a Sangiovese that was very good and on sale. Nice find!

JanKris Winery – a small, family owned place named after the owner’s two daughters. Jan waited on us and we had a nice visit, not about their wines, but about her attending college in Bozeman and her barrel racing career. We did not find much here we liked.

Summerwood – a beautiful new facility with a gorgeous tasting room. We got there late in the day and our tongues were about shot, so had a hard time judging their wines.

You can read more about these wineries (and find links to them) and see which clubs we belong to (i.e. our favorites) by checking our wine page.

The food this trip was exceptional and better than we have ever had. The Deck in Palm Springs offered great meals and the Blackened Seared Ahi was the best Don has ever had. The Hamlet at Moonstone Beach was very good as it always is (our third time there) and the lamb and pasta were extraordinary. The Cambria Pines Lodge provides excellent meals with good streaks and a salmon to die for. The Cioppino at the Moonstone Beach Bar and Gril l was loaded (and we mean loaded) with all kinds of seafood and a dozen of their oysters on the half shell disappeared in short order. And, of course, the home cooking at Keith’s was beyond compare!

Ok, enough of this blogging – time to go enjoy some of the 10 cases we ordered and shipped home!

Election - Good Riddance

2004-11-06T08:31:00.000-07:00

We returned from our wine tasting vacation and learned that not everyone had lost their minds with this election. We won’t even comment on the Presidential race as that was a lose-lose no matter which way it went. But there were some others we found refreshing:

1. Keith Goodenough is out. Thank God.
2. No court house tax. Just how many times do the voters of this county have to say no? Our mothers said it once and out came the paddle and we learned and so should those who support this money pit
3. Dick Sadler is not in. Thank God again. If he wants something more to bitch about he is more than welcome in California where gas is $2.50 per gallon, sales tax is 8% plus and there is an astronomical state income tax. Let’s call United Van Lines and get rolling on this. See you later, Dick. We could have defeated the court house tax without ya.
4. Terry Wingerter is out. Now, we really like Terry, but some new blood on the County Commission is always welcome.
5. Medical malpractice made it half way with passage of C and defeat of D.

Now that the election is over we can relax for another two years. Glad to see our fellow Wyomingites and Natronaites had not lost it completely. Back to our wine...

The World Series and an Eclipse

2004-10-28T05:41:00.000-06:00

In ancient times, people believed that an eclipse foreshadowed a coming disaster, death of the king or other big change. Isn't it just fitting that the Red Sox finally won a modern world championship during a total lunar eclipse? Maybe these ancient people weren't so far off in their beliefs, but hell, if it takes astrology to help get the job done I am all for it.

The Sox did not need astrology. They won 8 straight to win the title and they deserved it. As I watched the games I saw a team that wanted it more than their opponents and they went and got it. The Yankees struck me as a team that thought their salaries should automatically justify them as world champs. The Cards just did not want the title as can be seen by the pathetic batting performance of the heart of their line up. But the Sox wanted it. Take Manny Ramirez and has back-to-back errors in game 2. Did he let that get him down? Nope, not at all - he made up for it in offense hitting safely in every single post season game to take the series MVP award. So, it was not the stars and planets did it and there really was no curse, just damn good determination by a club that should not have been there to begin with.

I hope Sox Manager Terry Francona writes a book. I need to know how he built that stubborn determination into his team so I can use it at the hospital. The fact is that if the Sox can come back from 3 down against the Yankees then sweep the Cards in 4, then any one of us slackers can achieve great things in our careers and lives if we just get the head part right. I really believe Francona had a lot to do with this; I just want to know how!

So, now that the series is over I can switch channels and watch the Avalanche. Oops, forgot....The greed factor has hit the NHL. Well, I see the Cubs' 2005 schedule is now on their web site so with no hockey to watch I now have time to get my star charts and almanac out and see how the Cubs will win it all in '05!

Don

Red Sox Up 3 - Zip

2004-10-26T21:49:00.000-06:00

What was all this talk about David Ortiz being a defensive "liability" at first base? What was all this talk about the terrible Boston defense? Looked pretty good to me tonight. Sure, it was bad base running, but Ortiz through Suppan out all the way across the diamond. And Manny? Error free and a two run homer!

This series could not be turning out any better as far as I am concerned.

Except for one thing. Why are the Sox in the American League? Why is there even an American League? This DH thing has got to go. Did you see Pedro Martinez's first attempt at bat tonight? Was that even an attempt? For crying out loud, get rid of the DH and make these pitchers play baseball and stand in there and bat all season long. Whitey Ford did it. Koufax and Gibson did it. Having a DH and not making pitchers bat is like pulling your quarterback every time you think he is going to get sacked. C'mon, let's get back to real ball here. (Or at least let my grandma hit for Pedro next time.)

Don

Go Red Sox

2004-10-25T08:12:00.000-06:00

Mark Bellhorn did not hit the foul pole fencing, but did hit a double off the base of the center field wall. So, I guess he is not a God, just marginally superhuman.

Is the Red Sox curse gone? Hope so. Go Sox.

Movie "The Forgotten"

2004-10-25T08:08:00.000-06:00

Went and saw this yesterday. It was marginal. Too bad since I really like Gary Sinise. I was expecting this deep psychological thriller and ended up with this half sci-fi thing with a plot that was invented 60 years ago. Oh well, better than doing nothing on a cold Sunday afternoon.

Wine and Aging

2004-10-24T07:40:00.000-06:00

How times change! Wine has become so much a part of our lives that we plan vacations around it so we can check out wineries. This is not just the old Annie Greensprings of our youth, no! These are top quality higher priced wines that tickle our taste buds. And the whole world seems to be growing up and coming of age. Hell, even Mick Fleetwood has his own wine label now. God knows when we saw Mick live with Fleetwood Mac in '77 it wasn't a Cabernet he warmed up with before the show.

Last night we attended the third (or was it fourth?) annual wine tasting and auction to benefit the Central Wyoming Hospice and had the opportunity to sample over 500 wines. Maybe it is not such a good thing, but we had already had most of them so we went looking for something new. We found four that will end up in our little closet-made-cellar as soon as we can order them:

1. MacMurray Ranch Pinot Noir. This comes from the 900 acre ranch in Sonoma formerly owned by the actor Fred MacMurray. Delicious!
2. Mirassou Pinot Noir. This is much heavier and spicier than the MacMurray and wonderful
3. Davinci Chianti 2003. 87 points in Wine Spectator and under $15. Bring on the lasagna!
4. 2003 Huia Sauvignon Blanc. A more hearty Sauvignon Blanc that demands to be accompanied by great foods. This this is so full of citrus that we are thinking of breakfast....

Is Mark Bellhorn a God?

2004-10-24T07:32:00.000-06:00

How about the Sox's Mark Bellhorn? We missed most of the game last night but got home in time to see the Cards tie it up in the 8th only to watch Bellhorn ding the foul pole fence in right to put the Sox up by 2 runs. This homer was a carbon copy of one he hit in game 7 of the ACLS against the Yankees. How does he do that? C'mon, Tiger Woods may be able to put a golf ball three feet from the cup on the same hole on two consecutive days, but smashing a homer off the foul pole fence in the exact same spot twice in a week? The guy must be superhuman. Laura's sister Dona thinks so since she is trying to get her daughter Kimmie married off to the guy.

Go Sox - your curse is over. It is forever owned by the Cubs.

Welcome

2004-10-23T10:12:00.000-06:00

Welcome to our blog. Like the description in the header says, we don't have a clue what we are going to use this for, but maybe it will be a source of fun. Check back for whatever comes up!