Posts Tagged ‘American Life’

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My World # 19

February 23, 2009
My first home in Lakewood, Ohio, circa 1963.

My first home in Lakewood, Ohio, circa 1963.

I apologize for the quality of the picture above — it’s a scan from a slide made over 45 years ago.

This house was my first home after graduating from college — not bad, huh?

Actually, I only lived in part of the second floor.  I can’t remember how I found out about the house — I think I read about it in an ad in the Lakewood  paper.  But somehow I contacted the elderly couple who owned the house and who were looking for renters.  They had a bedroom with private bath and a shared kitchen for rent on the second floor.  There was a separate entrance for me to use to get to the room.  Since I thought what they were asking was very reasonable, I took the room.

The good Lord takes care of Indiana farm boys in the big city.  When I moved to Lakewood in August prior to beginning my teaching job, I found that the other room for rent had been rented to another new teacher at Marshall.  Larry taught English and was from southern Ohio, which is about as rural as my home in northern Indiana.

Larry and I were able to carpool to school almost every day that year.  The house, as you can see, was very spacious and in one of the older neighborhoods of Lakewood.  It was only about two blocks off the lake and I will admit that I enjoyed living there very much.

Unfortunately in the spring of that first year the owners sold the house to a younger couple, so I had to get myself another place to live.  But this house was an important part of my world for nearly a year.  When showing Betsy around some of my haunts in 2002, we drove past this house and it was still there.

To see more of our wonderful world, or to join and share your part of the world with us, click HERE.

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Posted in My World | 37 Comments »

We’re Helping the Economy

February 21, 2009
Our new computers. February 20, 2009.

Our new computers. February 20, 2009.

Betsy and I have been doing our part to help the economy.  So if things don’t improve soon, it won’t be because we haven’t been trying.

Yesterday we had to take our Prius into the dealership for her 120,000 mile service.  Let me just say that the service required was fairly major and I’m sure we helped contribute to the paychecks of at least a couple of mechanics.

We then headed over to the Apple store and made a MAJOR contribution to the economy.  We’ve been discussing new computers for over a year now, and we finally decided to take the plunge.  We like our Macintoshes and so we stayed with them.

Now all we have to do is transfer our files from the old computers to the new computers.  Hopefully much of that will be done overnight.  But if you don’t hear from us for a day or two, you know we’ve encountered a problem.

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Posted in Technology | 25 Comments »

The Honest Scrap Award

February 12, 2009

hosnet_scrap

Several weeks ago my blogger friend Kathleen honored me with the Honest Scrap award.  It’s taken me longer than it should to respond to her kindness, but here goes:

The first rule is to “list 10 honest things about yourself — make it interesting, even if it means digging deep”.  I’m not sure how interesting this is, but here are my ten.

1)  I grew up on a small farm in northwestern Indiana.  I was in 4-H and one year exhibited a blue-ribbon Jersey heifer at the County Fair.

2) When I was in the third grade I asked Santa Claus to bring me a set of encyclopedias.  He did, and I found the World Book Encyclopedia under the Christmas tree.  I forget how many volumes there were in the set, but I read my way through them.

3) I was one of the first people to drive a Mustang.  When Ford introduced the Mustang I was the representative of the Indiana State High School Press Association representative at the roll-out.  I spent three days in Detroit and got to drive a Mustang on a test track.

4)  I’ve admired Robert E. Lee for about as long as I can remember.  My high school term paper on him was 52 pages long.  Some of my classmates complained about the 12-page length requirement in the assignment.

5) After my freshman year at Manchester College I couldn’t find a summer job, so I went to summer school instead.  I graduated in eleven quarters.

6) I majored in mathematics and taught college-level mathematics for 15 years.  During the summer of 1982 the Dean of the College where I taught asked me to teach a computer science course.  My qualifications?  The junior high school  my son attended had a computer.

7) I resigned my teaching position at Heidelberg College on the day my daughter graduated in order to take a job teaching in China.  I spent a year teaching in Tianjin.

8) During the 30 years I taught in colleges, I commuted to campus by bicycle.

9) Many of my Chinese students collected stamps and they got me started as a stamp collector.  I collect the stamps of China, Hong Kong (several of my students moved there), Great Britain (my daughter studied in London for a semester), and the U.S.

10)  I first saw my beautiful bride because of a snow ‘storm’.  The services at the Episcopal Church in Hendersonville were cancelled on the first Sunday I was in Tennessee with my new job because of a quarter-inch of snow.  So I went to the Methodist Church with my parents, where their new associate pastor, Rev. Betsy, was introduced.  The rest, as they say, is history.

The rules say that I am to select 7 bloggers who I feel embody the spirit of Honest Scrap.  But I’ve gotten to know many more of you than that who are deserving of the award.  So if you would like to be an Honest Scrap honoree, please consider yourself selected.

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Posted in American Life | 16 Comments »

Where Has All the Time Gone?

January 31, 2009

happyretirementplates1

Before I retired, I had read (several times) about men who suddenly had all this time on their times and couldn’t handle it.  I guess the death rate for newly-retired men is higher than one would expect.

All I can say is that I would like to find the person that has all my extra time on his (or her) hands.  So far I haven’t seen all that spare time I was told to expect.

Of course some of this is my fault.  Since I retired Betsy and I have landscaped our yard and started growing roses.  So I can understand that I have more to do during warm weather.

But now it’s winter and there is very little to do outside.  I’ll admit I sleep a little later in the mornings than I did while I was working, but I stay up later at night.  Household chores don’t take up any more time than they did while I was working.

Before I retired I dreamed of having time to read.  I don’t get one issue of my newsmagazine read before the next one arrives.  I started a history book three months ago and still haven’t finished it.  (This from a guy who used to read a book in a single day).  My stamp newspapers are piling up in my inbox — unread.

I have made pages for my stamp albums and mounted the stamps, but I’ve received just as many new stamps.  I have converted old LPs to CDs, but still have a couple hundred to do.  I’ve also worked on digitizing my old slides, but I’m still stuck in the 1990s.

Of course, I’ve started blogging, but, hey, a guy has to have some fun!!

I could tell you more, but I don’t have time.

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Posted in American Life | 31 Comments »

Quo Vadis

October 18, 2008

I remember reading a book, Quo Vadis, as a youngster.  I vaguely remember a movie with that same name, but I’m not sure about that.  The book is a historical novel set in the time of Emperor Nero of Rome.  Quo Vadis is Latin for ‘Where are you going?’ and the book evidently made quite an impression on me since it popped into my head after fifty-some years.

Betsy and I went to Hendersonville yesterday to help out my folks and on the way back home we listened to a Nashville radio station.  There was a report that some organization was driving illegal aliens to early voting places and helping them vote.  The report, backed up by at least one election commissioner, was that the voters could not speak English and had no ID, but were allowed to vote anyway.  I had never thought of Nashville, Tennessee, as the home of a major political machine.

The report may not be true, but the fact that it was even made is disturbing.  One of the foundations of the American way of governance is that we have fair and free elections, and after the election is over and the people have spoken, we will all come together in support of our leaders.  This obviously did not happen in 1860, and to a lesser it didn’t happen in 2000 and 2004.

So what will happen this year?  What will happen if a sizable part of the American public thinks they were denied their right to vote?  What will happen if a sizable part of the American public thinks the election was stolen by voters who shouldn’t have voted?

Quo Vadis, America?

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Posted in American Life | 1 Comment »

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