I learned yesterday evening that a classmate of mine died in Boise last Sunday, May 31st. My first memory of her was in third grade. As the teacher went down the roll asking each person what name they wanted to use, Mary Kaye replied that she wanted to be called “Kaye”. When the teacher got to me, even though up to that time I had been called by my middle name “Kay”, I had to be called something different. Can’t have two people by the same name in the same classroom, I guess. That year I was known as “Roland” in the classroom and “Kay” everywhere else, including the playground. We were in different classrooms in the fourth grade but back together in fifth. By that time she was using “Mary Kaye” as her name and that’s how she remained through high school and graduation.

I’ve not seen her since then and was surprised to learn that she had been very sick for a while and had passed away.

It looks like I’ve gotten to the age where any of us in the Soda Springs High School Class of 1963 can go at any time. Bummer.

Rest in Peace, Mary Kay Isle!

I know … a day late….

1. Even though this is a day late, I did put a couple of other blog entries out yesterday. But then I totally forgot it was a Tuesday until I was driving to Georgetown to attend the City Council meeting and then it was too late. I barely get cell phone reception in Georgetown.
2. Speaking of City Council meetings, the one in Georgetown is always interesting. Lots of people show up and the meeting seems to me to be a showcase example of small town interactions. Last night’s meeting agenda included a complaint about someone with too many horses on their property and not keeping their geese penned up and a complaint about a yard that seriously needs to be cleaned up. Interestingly enough, no names were used. Everyone on the council and in the audience (except me) knew who was being talked about.
3. I could never charge enough money for the garden beds I build to pay for my labor. Either that or I have to decide that my time is worth around a dollar an hour. There’s no way to do these things fast and have them look as good as I want them to look.
4. We were at the Boise Temple on Saturday for my cousin’s Big Day at the Temple. Her husband was receiving his own endowment and then the family was being sealed. As I was sitting in the lobby waiting, in came a couple from Pocatello that I know fairly well. We chatted for a couple of minutes and they went to a different sealing. When we saw each other on Sunday we remarked about how often it happens that we are out of town and run into someone we know.
5. That reminded me of a time when Nina and I were in Salt Lake City sitting in a small cafe in one of the malls in downtown Salt Lake. A fellow walked past where Nina could see him and she said, “That looks like Tom Mooso!” He heard his name, turned around, and came back to talk to us. Perhaps twenty years previously we had been in Japan together and had served together in the Johnson Branch Presidency.
6. We have had copious amounts of rain the past couple of days. Driving home from Georgetown the sky provided quite a lightning display. Some of the streaks of lightning went across the entire sky and there were often lightning strikes in front, to the right, and to the left all at the same time. I think the last time I saw a lightning display that spectacular was when we were living in Otterbein, Indiana in 1970 and watched a massive thunderstorm move across the fields in front of the house.
7. One other memorable lightning story. I was flying from Atlanta to Denver and we were routed around a big thunderstorm. The routing took us north of Cheyenne, Wyoming and then south along the front of the Rocky Mountains. The air was very turbulent and the airplane was bouncing around. I had a window seat on the left side of the airplane as we went past a very large anvil-shaped thunder cloud. Hundreds of lightning streaks were flashing around the sides of the cloud and the whole cloud flashed like a florescent light bulb that needs to be changed. It was another marvelous display of nature.
8. We had a group of Rotarians from northern Germany at our Rotary Club meeting yesterday. While my German is still pretty good (or else they were being very, very kind), I can’t think very fast in German anymore. Time to get back to that country for a while and get some practice thinking in German rather than translating. One of the Germans was from Hamburg and knew of the TRW company in Hamburg that I did some work for back in the mid-1970’s. The company still has the same name, but a different mother company than TRW. It was good to know that they were still in business.
9. School is out here in Pocatello. While I was working on the raised garden bed in the garage yesterday I could hear kids all around the neighborhood. When a thunderstorm would come over, they’d all run inside and then reappear as soon as the rain went away. On Monday a neighbor woman and her daughter stopped by to see the upside-down tomatoes Nina is growing. The daughter complained that her brother “won’t play school with me!” I had to chuckle at that remembering that our kids all played school for several weeks after school let out for the summer as they were growing up. Can’t wait for school to end so we can go play school….
10. Since it’s not raining at present, it’s time to go spray on the last coat of stain on the custom 9 ft raised garden bed. I have to do the spraying outside and rain isn’t very conducive. The radar maps show the rain has moved to the east and we shouldn’t have anymore until the thunderstorms wake up again late this afternoon.

And that’s all for (yesterday)….!!

The custom-built raised garden bed is nearing completion. I’ll need to put another coat of stain on tomorrow morning. The other beds I’ve made I’ve used the Wagner PowerSprayer to put on the stain, but because the stain is so thin, it tends to run and to make splotches. So this time I decided to hand stain with a paintbrush. I won’t do that again! It took what seemed to be forever to get finished. Better is to spray on the stain and then use a brush to wipe up the runs.

The green color in the picture is because of the lighting and the reflection from the wet driveway. It really isn’t green!

We’ll be going to the Farmers Market again this Saturday morning. I’m going to make up some small planter boxes and take them in for sale. Hopefully I can sell them on the spot. Pictures forthcoming when I’ve got a couple of them made (maybe tomorrow).

I’m making up a custom-built raised garden bed for a lady in the neighborhood. I stopped over there yesterday evening to look at where she plans to put the bed and to talk with her about whether she wanted it to be painted or stained. She has a teen-aged, delightful, funny, and very autistic son Dane who greeted me and wanted to know my name, how to spell it, and exactly how to pronounce it. Then he said he was going to draw a picture of me and went back into the house.

I went with the lady of the house around back where the garden bed is going, we decided on stain rather than paint, and that the extensions for hanging flowers and such would go on the ends of the bed rather than along one side. Then Dane came out of the house with a piece of paper on which he had sketched my picture. I was actually quite amazed. It really does look like me … from the glasses to the suspenders. The picture is worth preserving for posterity!

The other day a friend forwarded a message purporting to show church signs from Our Lady of Martyrs Catholic Church and Beulah Cumberland Prebyterian Church with their responses and counter responses to each other. The signs read as follows:

All dogs go to heaven

Only humans go to heaven. Read the Bible

Got loves all His creatures, dogs included

Dogs don’t have souls. This is not open for debate

Catholic dogs go to heaven. Presbyterian dogs can talk to their pastor

Converting to Catholicism does not magically grant your dog a soul

Free dog souls with conversion

Dogs are animals. There aren’t any rocks in heaven either

All rocks go to heaven

This funny exchange caused me to look it up on the Internet. First I found the entire exchange documented on Snopes.com where the entire exchange was determined as “never happened.” They suggested that the signs were generated online at a site called Church Sign Generator which led me to says-it.com.

Sure enough, the site once allowed someone to make up church signs and see what they would look like. However, the site doesn’t work anymore! The Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center sent them a Cease and Desist order claiming that the site contributed to fraud because people can use the site to mock up concert tickets.

I was at first amused and then a bit torqued off over lawyers and law suits. Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure that all dogs go to heaven and very few lawyers.

Why be brief?

1. During my growing up years, May 30th was a State holiday called Decoration Day. The holiday was always on the 30th. That was the day we made the pilgrimage to all the cemeteries around to place flowers on the graves of family members and flags on the graves of deceased veterans. School in Soda Springs always ended not later than the day before Decoration Day which made the day even more important. In May 1966 President Lyndon Johnson set the last Monday in May as Memorial Day and the holiday hasn’t been the same since. Now it’s just another three-day weekend with most people no longer associating the day with remembering our war dead.
2. The Big Event associated with that holiday was the Indianapolis 500 race. NASCAR hadn’t been invented and the only other racing to compete with the Indianapolis 500 for TV time was Grand Prix racing with the fall Watkins Glenn Prix being the Big Deal. Today the Indianapolis 500 is a footnote event and Grand Prix has disappeared, I think.
3. A few years ago while on a business trip to Belgium, I took the opportunity to do a driving tour around some of the World War I cemeteries in Belgium. One cemetery I visited was a German cemetery with a very moving sculpture of a father and a mother grieving for their fallen son. That lead me to remember a post about the last cemetery I visited and the graves of soldiers who had died in the last hours of the war. I also posted a number of pictures from Ieper, from the driving tour, and from the American Cemetery in Waregem, Belgium. That caused me to have to go look at the pictures and read the posts once again. So much for trying to be somewhat brief!
4. Nina and I actually tried to go to an Indianapolis 500 race. We were living in Chardon, Ohio and a good friend at the time was a Major Indianapolis 500 Fan. The four of us drove over to Indianapolis and stayed in a crummy motel. We went to the race on Sunday, but the cars made two circuits around the track when the rains came in copious quantities. After a couple of hours of waiting, the race as postponed to the next day. That didn’t work for any of us, so back home we went. Since then the race has been moved to Monday permanently.
5. We spent Memorial Day with our daughter Heather and her family in North Salt Lake. One highlight of the day was swimming in their marvelous pool. Nina got sunburned … I got a bit of color on the top of my head. They have a very nice pool.
6. On Memorial Day morning Nina and I drove to the cemetery where Trevor is buried and where the grave stone also memorializes Traci. I got off at the wrong exit on the freeway which required some back tracking. We got to the cemetery to learn we couldn’t remember exactly where his grave is located. The Really Big Pine Tree by his grave is no longer a Really Big Pine Tree. I’ll claim that as the excuse and I’m sticking to it. This time, though I wrote down the locations as well as made a waypoint in my iPhone with the latitude and longitude. Maybe we’ll have fewer problems next time!
7. Another Memorial Day activity was going to the movie theater to see Night At the Museum Battle of the Smithsonian.  It was a corny, crazy, funny, and satisfying movie. I’d actually like to see it again! The other big movie of the weekend (which was supposed to be the Really Big Deal) was Terminator Salvation, which got tromped by the Night at the Museum comedy. I’ve no interest in the Terminator movie at all. On the other hand, I’m looking forward to seeing Star Trek again!
8. A really stupid event took place in Burma where a guy with no sense at all swam across a lake to “visit” Aung San Suu Kyi, the only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner. That resulted in him being captured and the Burmese government gaining the opportunity to put Kyi on trial and continue her imprisonment. Worse is that the nut case is apparently a Mormon. We’re not imune either to crazies.
9. Bought a bunch of lumber today to use tomorrow to build some garden beds that have been sold. I may come close to breaking even on this venture … no cruise is forthcoming from it, though. Dang!
10. What was supposed to be a fast ten things has turned into a rather lengthy period of time, mostly because I got sidetracked reading from my blog about the WWI cemeteries and looking at my pictures. Now I’m rather nostalgic and am right ready to travel to Europe once again.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

I got one of those email messages that had been forwarded more than a dozen times. So, I’ve no idea who to attribute these to, probably some late-night show comedian. But, they are funny!

The economy is so bad that:

• CEO’s are now playing miniature golf.
• Hot Wheels and Matchbox stocks are trading higher than GM.
• Jewish women are marrying for love.
• Even people who have nothing to do with the Obama administration aren’t paying their taxes.
• Obama met with small businesses to discuss the Stimulus Package: GE, Pfizer and Citigroup.
• McDonald’s is selling the 1/4 ouncer.
• Parents in Beverly Hills fired their nannies and learned their children’s names.
• A truckload of Americans got caught sneaking into Mexico.
• The most highly-paid job is now jury duty.
• People in Africa are donating money to Americans.
• Motel Six won’t leave the light on.
• The Mafia is laying off judges.
• A funeral director committed suicide because he needed the business.
• My cat sold my dog to a Chinese restaurant.

And finally … Congress says they are looking into this Bernard Madoff scandal. Hey, great idea …the guy who made $50 billion disappear is being investigated by the people who made $750 billion disappear.