Penni's day one year later

Last July Penni wanted to come back to New Mexico. She knew her time was growing short and needed to visit our Dad's grave. The previous August she drove out here for his funeral, but spent that day in the hospital with a bowel blockage and had to be medevaced back to Texas. The Dallas Morning News was running a seried of articles on Palliative care and she was one the patients they were following. For this trip they sent a staff photographer, Sonya N. Hancock with video and still cameras.
After flying into Albuquerque they spent the night in a hotel. I loaned them (Penni, David, Michelle and Sonya) my little Elantra for the trip to Santa Fe. I drove up with them in my Windstar with Mom, Linda, Melissa, and Eddie.
First stop was the National Cemetary in Santa Fe.


Penni with Mom and her husband, David.




After letting Penni spend as much time as she needed, we then drove to the Santa Fe Plaza.
We parked by a clothing store and did some shopping.




After buying a few items we headed towards the La Fonda Hotel to eat in their restaurant for some green chile.

After a nice lunch we took a leisurely stroll through the Native American vendors that have been selling their wares here for three hundred years.

Sonya then treated all of us to ice cream.

Leaving Santa Fe we then drove to Glorieta prayer gardens where Penni and David were married. (Aside, fittingly while we were holding our service and spreading Penni's ashes around the Cross that is behind the gazebo in this picture there was a wedding taking place at the same time.)

All of us in the Gazebo.

We all headed home, but Penni wasn't ready to head back to the hotel. On the way back they decided to go up the Tram which goes from the base of Sandia Mountain to the Crest.

Penni and Michelle looking out over Albuquerque from the top of the mountain.

They stopped by my house and spent some time with Richie who stayed home with Christina and Daniel.

Penni holding our kitty, Pippin.

The hardest part of the day was saying goodbye.

We recently received these pictures on a disc from Sonya and copies of the special reprint of the five part series the Dallas Morning news printed from Dec. 14-21, 2008.

These are a very few of the more than 600 pictures Sonya took over a six month period for this special.

A long day over. Penni's wish fulfilled.

At Peace

The bench was placed around the cross instead of the gazebo at Glorieta. Actually a better location as a place of contemplation and prayer.


This is the bench with the plaque. May it be used for much prayer and contemplation.

Mom and Penni's daughter, Michelle, spreading ashes.

Penni's wish fulfilled.

Mom's posted about this as well.

Emperical Evidence

Paul Krugman posted these on his blog.

There is something obviously wrong when a Senator gets applauded for calling the climate change which in the next twenty to fifty years will kill millions of people and cause who knows what havoc a hoax. Is the money being paid to him by corporations afraid of losing profits should we take sensible steps to halt this process really worth all this?

Double Whammy

I take off yesterday for my regular round of golf with the gaggle, come home, get on the 'puter to check e-mail and find out Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett-Majors-O'Neil have died.
The media circus for both of them won't subside for some time.
I came of age in the 70's and Farah was bigger in that decade than Marilyn Monroe was in the 50's. For the record. I did not own her poster. Grinnygranny wouldn't let me buy one. We did enjoy watching Charlie's Angels.
I was never a fan of Michael Jackson's music. His video of Thriller came out the second year of teaching and my 7th grade girls that year hounded me into showing the class the video (with administrative approval).
Everyone who lived in that decade and remembers it has felt a part of their lives die with the loss of these two celebrities, and as such all the media circus is justified, even with all the problems facing the world today. With Farah the media, her fans and everyone in general were prepared for the news. Micheal was a shock. It came out of the blue and he was so young.

Death has been a companion in my family for two years. Yesterday's news mirrored in a peculiar way all we've endured. When we learned Dad had cancer and was given a month to live he'd suffered from dementia for a number of years. We were sad and when the time came deeply grieved, but comforted knowing the pain was over and he'd lived a long and prosprous life. Penni's struggle with cancer lasted four years, but when her days came to an end last December the grief was magnified by knowing her life was so tragically short.
Tomorrow we meet to place a plaque on a bench by the gazebo in the prayer gardens at Glorieta in her memory and spread her ashes.

Vans

Grinnygranny and the kids on our trip to San Antonio.

My late father-in-law fell and hurt himself. They called and I went down. I couldn't talk my MIL into calling for an ambulance and all I had to take him to the hospital was the Ranger extended cab. The kids were also getting too big for them to ride in the drop seats. So we bought our first mini-van. It was a used '92 Ford Aerostar. A crazy thing happened. The dealership had a promotion that for buying a vehicle you got a free vacation. There were a few cities to choose from and we chose San Antonio. What started off as a nice family vacation over spring break turned into a family extravaganza. Mom and Dad decided they'd like to go with us in their RV. Penni and her family joined in. Bruce was living in Houston at the time and so was Penni's brother-in-law and his family. When everyone showed up we had seventeen trying to find a table at the Hard Rock Cafe on the River Walk.

The day we left it snowed and we dodged zero visibility all the way down to Ft. Stanton. From there we went to Fredricksburg. We stayed at KOA's on the drive. The so-called free vacation included a room at the Mariott River Walk, which was nice. Everyone else stayed at the KOA. For three days and two nights we toured the River Walk, a really great attraction, went to Sea World, walked through the Alamo. went up the space needle and over all had a fantastic time. Upon checking out having to pay for parking, the lodging tax and a couple of other expenses not covered by the company responsible for our "free vacation", it was just a little bit more than staying at the KOA. San Antonio has a really nice KOA, if you're into those kinds of accomodations. It had a movie room at night a barbeque pit for diiner, and a nice swimming pool. This was the first trip outside of NM we took as a family. We've been traveling fairly regularly ever since. If your traveling cross-country vans are the best way to go.

At White Sands National Monument. The kids are on the sands not the van.

The Aerostar had one major problem. A lousy transmission. Ford has an overdrive on their automatic transmissions. If your going up a steep hill or pulling something you use the drive otherwise you use O on the shift. Between 35 and 40 it would shift and down shift back and forth. Intown driving is pretty constant at that speed. We had the transmission completely rebuilt and it didn't fix the problem. Still with both our parents aging and the kids getting bigger we needed a van. Our next one was a green '96 Windstar. The passenger seats in the Windstar are a lot more comfortable than they were in the Aerostar. We would still be driving this one if not for one big problem. It had bad brakes. They had to be replaced at 24,000 miles and adjusted every time you did an oil change. Ford went on the cheap for an ABS system. They purposely had too little brake fluid, which kept the brakes from locking in a panic stop.

I was turned off by Ford. The last make of van I wanted was another Windstar and we were looking at a Chevy to replace it, but when we compared it with the newer version of the Windstar we chose a silver '99 version. Ford fixed the braking and transmission problems. We still have it and have put on over a hundred thousand miles on it. It's been down to San Antonio a couple of times while E was in basic training and tech school with the Air Force. We've taken it up to Nebraska to visit BIL and his family. Numerous trips to Oklahoma to vist E when he was stationed in Altus and up to see Bruce. The miles were really put on it when Autypesty took it to Canton as she was helping out Mom with Dad and Penni. It has the sweetest ride on the highway. Mom thinks of it as hers and has treatened us with death and destruction if we get rid of it.

We did look at replacing it with a Freestar, but Ford went brain dead by adding two thousand pounds making it way too sluggish and reduced gas mileage. Ford killed the Freestar and doesn't make a mini-van anymore.

Rangers

Over the last twenty years, I've had four Ford Ranger pickups. The first was a Canyon Red 1985 plain Jane. We bought a white camper shell. This was before seat belt laws. We found four real thick cushions, placed them in the bed and E would ride back there. He loved it.

The next one was a 1990 light blue with silver trim (Dallas Cowboys colors) Six cylinder extended cab. It had standard transmission, but was so much easier to drive with air conditioning and power steering. The kids sat in the back drop seats. We bought a silver camper shell that made it look fantastic.

Grinnygranny drove them more than I did. She went through a phase where she liked trucks. While she was driving them I got stuck with a Honda Aero .125 motor scooter. I worked one mile from the school where I was teaching so I really didn't need much of a ride. I went through a series of clunkers until the kids got too big for the drop seats in the blue Ranger. We traded it in on our first van (which will be the subject of my next post).

I finally got to pick out my own Ranger. I didn't choose wisely. The clunker I was driving lost it's heating so I found a 1996 white plain Jane. It wasn't until I'd driven it for a week I finally figured out there wasn't enough leg room. Which I couldn't figure out. The first Ranger had plenty of leg room, why didn't this one? It was a long bed, which cut off about four inches in the cab. I couldn't wait until I had enough equity in it to trade it in on my last Ranger. I picked out a 1999 Jalepeno Green regular cab with air conditioning, power steering, but it still had a standard transmission. The only problem was that I bought it in June and in August transferred schools from across town to two blocks from home. I was back to not needing a vehicle.

I've Joined The Gaggle

A week ago I went to a private golf course as I was getting bored with the muni's. I'd called to see if they could fit me in (courses don't set tee times for single golfers) I was told they could so I drove the ten miles to get there (it's ten miles from my house to just about anywhere I want to go) and they couldn't fit me in before a scheduled group was set to leave. Then they told me I could play with them. They call themselves "the gaggle" and are bunch of senior golfers that meet every Thursday and Monday at 9:30. This is my first year being considered a senior golfer. I like paying the lower rate, but am still sure if I like falling into this catagory.
About fifteen minutes before their scheduled time they pull numbers out of a hat to form teams. I joined it and the group had 22 golfers.
Scores are kept with handicaps. When everyone gets in each team puts six bucks into the kitty and they divide it up to the team who had the best score on the front nine, back nine and total. Everyone kicks in a quarter for all birdies. Out of 22 players there were three birdies that day. So it cost me (above paying for the round which because it's during the week wasn't too bad) a buck and a half for the kitty and seventy five cents for the birdies. My team didn't have any birdies or win any of the kitty, but it was good fun. I played with some interesting people and have the rest of the summer's golf pretty well set.
I played again last Tuesday (the course had a tournament on Monday so the gaggle was delayed a day). Only nine guys showed making three groups of three, didn't win anything that day. Today twenty seven showed up and my team won the back nine and total so I won seven dollars and fifty cents.
It's penny ante and seems like over the long haul everything evens out. It has made me be serious about my handicap, which has been humbling. Most of the guys are five to ten years older than me and have handicaps ten or more strokes lower than me.

My Car

The Colt was actually Grinnygranny's car. I was riding around on a Honda Motorized bicycle, what they called at the time a Moped. It's top speed was 25 mph, but got around a hundred miles to the gallon. It got me to the university and back with the advantage of not having to find a parking space (scarce and espensive).

I was able to get around most of town using residential streets and only having to cross major ones and did my student teaching puttering around on the little machine. I'd chain it up on the metal ramp of the portable. The students nicknamed me Mr. Moped. The worst thing that happened to me on it was after a short rain storm I got drenched when a car passed me hitting a puddle.

In the fall of that year I substituted until November, and the little Moped got me around without too much trouble. I was hired on a short term contract to replace a teacher whose husband was tranferred out of country. At this point I needed a car.

I went to the credit union, found out how much I could afford, found a nice station wagon, signed the contract, filled it up on the way home on a Friday night. I got up Saturday morning and it was half empty when I turned it on. Getting under it I saw gasoline dripping from a hole in the tank. I drove it back to the dealer. They offered to pay half of the repair. I gave them their keys back. Monday I went to the credit union and canceled the sale.

I then found a much better car. A white 1980 Fiat Brava. It had plush vinyl seats a 2.0 ohc 4 cylinder engine that felt like a V8. I really liked this car. A week after I bought it the radiator blew. I took it back to the dealer, and they repaired it without charge. Finding a good dealer is soooo important.

The only problem with it was the fool who had it before me put spoke wheels on it. It drove fine until around 60 mph then the front end started vibrating. Which meant you couldn't take it out on the road, and this was a car that would have been sweet on the highway.

I did find a picture with E sitting on it when he was about two.

The next year I had my first full year of teaching at a middle school, and was hired as asst track coach at a high school. The first day I went down to coach I was sitting across from my car in the head coaches car in the faculty parking lot discussing my duties and watched a student turn too sharply and bashed in the driver side rear door. Naturally she didn't have insurance and the repair was under the deductable on my policy.

I didn't have the money to put regular wheels on it or fix the door, but all in all it was a fine car.

First New Car

When Grinnygranny had been working a year where she still works 29 years later, and I'd just finished student teaching we felt it was time to trade in the Comet for a new car. I looked at a Chevy economy car and wasn't all that impressed. Then we found a 1982 Dodge Colt hatchback. It was built better and cost less than the Chevy. It had a peppy 4 cylinder engine with an automatic transmission and is the only car I've ever seen that had a lever next to the gear shifter. The lever had an E position and a P position. E for economy and P for power. Normally it was in the E position, but if you needed a little boost you could put it in the P position for more oomph. Living in an area with mountains it came in handy a time or two going up a steep grade, other than that it did fine in E.

One of the great pleasures, that with gas becoming so expensive may be dying, is the Sunday afternoon drive into the mountains. We have various routes we take for these drives. One of them is to go out Tijeras Canyon, turn at the (Sandia) Crest turn off, go through Cedar Crest, but instead of heading to the top of Sandia mountain continue on to Madrid and Golden. (Madrid is where John Travolta, Ray Liotta and others filmed the movie Wild Hogs). This picture was taken when E was around a year old. Grinnygranny grimaced when I showed it to her. It was her first curly perm.

Sweet Ride

I was driving the '69 Plymouth when Grinnygranny and I were married, she had a blue '76 Ford Maverick. A nice enough driving car, it had a V6 engine that was good on gas with plenty stop and go power. She'd had a '68 Mustang in high school, traded it in on a Vega (she still thinks that was the worst decision of her life and traded it in on the Maverick) and wanted to get a sports car again. We both liked the Camaro and started looking around for one.

I gave the Plymouth to Penni we traded in the Maverick for a red with white top, '77 Camaro. It was the first car with my name on the title. When we bought it gas was selling for fifty cents a gallon. Within three months it jumped to a buck a gallon so trading in an economy car for a gas guzzler didn't seem so wise in hind sight. Even so this was the sweetest driving car I've ever owned. It had a 350 four barrel V8 that was pure power, and with it's wide stance it had the smoothest ride. You felt like you were floating down the highway. You did have to be careful on speed bumps and dirt roads as it didn't have much clearance.

The Pontiac Trans Am was much more popular because of the Smokey And The Bandit movie, but driving around like Jim Rockford wasn't that bad.

This was the one car I really hated parting with. When E was born we couldn't afford to make the payments on it and the hospital bill.

My father-in-law gave us his spare car, a '71 Mercury Comet. It had four doors and a fairly good sized trunk which was much more useful for putting all the stuff that you need to haul around small children.

My friend Russ at Private Buffoon, one of the old local blogging geezers that have been getting together to drink a  beer or two the last couple of months, posted this song on his blog and I just can't resist posting it here. It's really fun. Take a listen.

Summer fun

I've been hitting the golf courses quite often the last two weeks. It's fun getting into shape.

I book most of my tee times through GolfNow. The costs are lower and they have a few perks. One of the perks is that if you book 5 tee times you get a free round of golf. I went online to set up my free round only to be told they ran out of them and to check back later. I know sooner or later I'll get my free round, but this does speak about how popular the site has become.

Sonic is giving out free Rootbeer floats today. Oh does that bring back memories from working at an A&W Rootbeer stand. (Added later) Grinnygranny and Auntypesty wanted to take them up on their offer. You couldn't get close to the place! Sitting there for thirty minutes or more to just get in an order would cost more in gasoline than the floats. I wonder if the oil industry is subsidizing the giveaway?

I've also been going through boxes of pictures looking for some of the cars I've owned over the years. You won't believe how many pictures we have of all the animals over the years. It'll take some time to put the kids and grand kids pictures in chronological order. For some reason I can't find many pictures of our vehicles, unless they were used as a backdrop, but only a portion of the cars, trucks and vans are visible.

A Hearty Congratulations

Truly great news, Irina at the Ignoble experiment blog graduated from Law School and is currently getting ready to take her bar exam. Well done and good luck.

The Battleship

My senior year Dad bought a '69 Fury III, It was yellow with a green fabric top, had a 318 V8, and one problem. It had extensive hail damage on the hood and trunk, but it drove like a dream. When everyone was telling Dad not to buy a car with that much body damage he decided to buy it (low mileage and low price) by saying that the hail damage didn't help or hurt it go down the road any better or worse.

When I graduated and had a scholarship to Wayland I naturally wanted to take my Rambler Classic with me. Mom wouldn't let me. Mainly, though on a full ride, I didn't have any money to put gas in it, make repairs, or pay insurance. Needless to say I wasn't a happy camper. My room mate was from church and we drove off to college in his '69 Sport Fury (only difference was that it had a 353 V8). The 318 had good power from a stop, but topped out at around 80 mph, the 353 was a little sluggish from 0 to 40, but could cruise all day long at a 100 mph.

Mom took in a boarder that fall. A Vietnamese college student and sold the Rambler to her. Mom's regretted selling that car ever since. The girl wrecked it not too long after buying it.

When I was attending Seminary in Fort Worth and needed a car Dad gave me the Plymouth. They'd driven it for five years and I drove it for four. It took a beating and kept on ticking.

When I met Grinnygranny and we started dating I was a little embarrassed. The fabric top had split and looked real raggedy, there were a number of dints and scratches, the paint had faded, so I had the dints fixed and repainted it. I didn't have enough to fix the hail damage, but I'd gotten rather used to them.

When Penni married the first time and needed a car we were in a position to let her have it. She drove it for about a year. By that time they stopped selling gas with lead, and the engine wasn't designed for unleaded.

This car was a real work horse and about the best car all of us ever owned.

If Chrysler still made cars this good, they wouldn't have gone bankrupt.

Cadillac of the drive-in

The third car I learned to drive was a 1963 Rambler American 330 station wagon. The way it worked was that Mom drove the Pontiac to work and back, Dad drove the Rambler, Bruce and I fought over who would drive the Olds, he usually won that argument since he was a Senior and I was a Sophomore.

The Rambler was a standard shift and Dad picked me up the summer between 9th and 10th grade at driving school. He took me out on a dirt road (this was before Albuquerque exploded in population growth) and I got my first lesson in how to use the clutch. It took me ten minutes to strip all the gears and Dad had to drive home in reverse.

It had a cast iron flathead 6 cylinder engine that was about as easy to work on as any engine ever designed. It got 100 horse power which was plenty of pep, but not drag racing fast.

Bruce bought his first car. Mom and Dad traded in the Olds and Pontiac on other cars and I inherited the Rambler Spring of my junior year. This was the best car in the world for dating, especially going to a drive-in movie. Keep in mind this was before head rests. AMC introduced the split seat that had adjustable backs. In fact they would go all the way back to level with the back seat. At the drive in you could drop the front seats and that created a nice comfortable space to enjoy your date. Mom really hated this feature.

The summer between my junior year and senior year I worked as a bus boy at Sears in their coffee shop (yes they used to have such things). Almost every penny I made went into fixing this car. I replaced the shocks, the water pump, tuned it up, new tires and was ready to go. School started, I quit my job to run cross-country and track, which as everyone knows is a bad place to be -- all systems go.

Saturday, Sept 4 1971 I was on my way to pick up my girl friend to see a movie. A car ran through a red light hit me on the back left tire, spun me around like a top. He spun one way I spun off the other. I had to get out the passenger door as the drive door was jammed and the bastard that hit me took off.

He snapped the axle and if the grill of his car had not caught between the car and the tire he'd have flipped me over. (No seat belts I wouldn't have walked out in one piece). My only injury was a bruised knee cap that hit the emergency brake handle.

Bruce was a Police Aide at that time and by sheer coincidence was OJT in the "hit-and-run" department. He saw that my case wound up on top of the pile. They found the car that hit me a couple of miles away, but the driver was long gone. They traced the car to a man who had taken a .45 and blew his brains out in the car two weeks before I got hit. The car was given to his ex-wife who left it on the street, in summer, without cleaning it out, and someone stole the car. The gal's brother had a two page arrest record and if you connect the dots most likely was the guy who totaled my car, but since I couldn't make a positive ID that's as far as it went.

On record I got hit by a dead man.

The insurance company paid off on the blue book value, which wasn't much. Mom gave that money to Bruce to buy his car so he could buy another one.

My Rambler station wagon was replaced by a '62 Rambler Classic sedan (it also had the front seat levels with the back seat feature), but it needed lots of work that I didn't have money to fix it up with.

Old Clunkers

In a previous post I mentioned I learned to drive in a '58 Olds, actually I learned in three cars, that was just one of them.

The second car was a 1963 Pontiac LeMans. I can't find a picture of the car in question. Pontiac upsized the LeMans and that's all I can find. Pontiac also had a Tempest that was their version of the Chevy Corvair, and it's not the same car either. This car looked a lot like the '66 Dodge Dart.

The Olds had a huge powerful engine, the Pontiac was a gutless wonder. It had a slant 4 cylinder engine (looked like a V8 cut in half) and though the car looked fast it took forever to build up speed. The transmission never worked properly and it had a stupid little knob on the dash to put it into gear instead of a column shift or floor shift.

This was the car Mom preferred I drive, it was the last car I'd try to drag race in. The real reason I took the driving test in the Olds was that when I got home from school that day the Pontiac had a flat tire. The dome light only worked for one night.

It was the first night I wore my letter jacket (lettered first semester in high school in cross-country). After a basketball game I drove to the A & W Rootbeer stand where I'd worked over the summer (I still prefer A & W Rootbeer to all others). I was starting to get out of the car to go inside and say hi to everyone I still knew that worked there when a car of about five guys pulled up from the rival high school and ran at me. I barely had time to lock my door when they started banging on the hood and roof. I started it up, backed up and drove away. The dome light came on that one time as a result of their banging on the roof.

Bruce tried driving it with four friends in it up a steep hill and threw a rod. The one car we were not sorry to get rid of. I think the reason Pontiac doesn't have picture of this car anywhere on the WWW is because they are ashamed to have ever produced it.

Summer Starts

• There's three good reasons to be a teacher: June, July and August.
  
• Schools out for now and I'm on my long (unpaid) vacation. 
  
• Grinnygranny and I went to see the Star Trek movie. A wife who enjoys all the incarnations of Star Trek means I married well. We enjoyed it. There's a number of other movies out or coming out we'd like to see at the theater, but not sure we'll get to all of them. All you have to do is wait six months and they show up on DVD, PPV or premium channels. When we got home we watched Marley and Me on PPV. I didn't expect it to have such a sad ending.
  
• Mom came over to get a bud off my rose bush, it reminds her of a rosebush Dad used to have at another house.
  
• Had a nice round of golf with my golfing buddies this morning and am now taking it easy.
  
• Grinnygranny and I have a tee time tomorrow morning.
  
• Summer is getting off to a good start.
  

Roses

I

I have this rose bush in my front yard. It's always been a real scrawny thing. The other bush is an American Beauty and is huge, putting out hundreds of flowers from May to November. This bush has never been very big and usually only puts out one or two flowers a year.

I've babied it using rose food and fertilizer for fifteen years and that's all it's ever done. About two weeks ago as the other bushes were starting to bloom this one looked dead.

I was contemplating digging it up so I found a couple of rose bushes at Big Lots and I bought a big bag of potting soil. I planted the two new bushes in the potting soil in a planter to get them going and thought I'd move the one that survived (a real nasty wind storm happened a couple of days after I put them out) in the place of the poor dead bush. 

E dumped what was left of the potting soil on top of the bush I intended to dig up and in just two days it came to life. I've taken six roses off of it and there are five already in full bloom with six more ready to open. I must have scared it, or it just needed potting soil instead of miracle grow.

 It's bloomed more in the last week than in over ten years. The reason I've worked with the bush is that it has gorgeous flowers. A light yellow with red tint and around three inches in diameter.

Glad They're Over

Dancing and Idol are f-i-n-a-l-y over.

Let the screaming and yelling begin.

Come on people neither one is about talent, they're about popularity. If they were about talent Gille and Adam would have won hands down.

Can either show come up with more pure garbage to drag out announcing the winner?

Oh the things men do to please their women, like suffering through shows like these. Unfortunately America's Got Talent is waiting in the wings.

Past Cars

When I was fifteen we were eating at a restaurant across the street from a used car dealership. After dinner we walked across the street to look at the cars and came across a pink '58 Oldsmobile Super 88. When Dad asked how much the guy said $100. Taking it out for a test drive the first thing we noticed was that it had a really powerful engine. The only real problem was that the odometer was stuck. Dad bought it. About a month later we took a trip down to El Paso. When we got to the motel and Dad added up how long it took to get there, he figured we averaged over a hundred miles an hour. The one thing about this car was that at a hundred mph you didn't know you were going any faster than 40. It only got ten miles per gallon, but when gas only cost forty cents a gallon it wasn't too bad.

This was the car I learned to drive in. It had a 398 four barrel V8 engine and that car could move. When I did the driving test to get my licensee I thought I was doing a great job, then as we were on a residential street the inspector asked me how fast I was going. 40 in a 25 zone. He asked me why I was driving so fast, what you would call an oops moment. Getting in he told me that speeding on a driving test was an automatic failure. Ever have that sinking feeling? He was  nice enough to pass me so I got my license.

The car did have a few problems. It would kill a battery every six months and it always seemed to die as I was getting ready to go out on a date. I'd be all after shaved, and dressed up, go out and the damn thing would not start. The heater got stuck and you could not turn it off, the only good thing about that was that the heater finally died in March before it got too hot outside to drive it with the heater on. I did race a bit with it making everyone driving those mustangs and camaros wonder how I could keep up with them. One time I had the whole cross-country team in it driving up I-40 and to show off I ran it up to 120. I didn't go faster than that because at that point it would hydroplane. When Dad got home late that night he walked into my room and asked me when I was going to put tires on it. I said I didn't know it needed tires (I was seventeen, give me a break here) he took me out to look at the tires. They weren't bald, they had cord showing through. To this day I wonder why I'm alive.

Viva Sha Yexin

Today I'm doing a duplicate post. This is also at Captain's Log.

Scott Horton has an interview with Sha Yexin a Chinese author and dissident. It is an absolute must read for the entire interview, but the most clearly articulated and informative answer I had to copy here. He is answering in the context of China's totalitarian state, but it so perfectly applies to the eight year reign of Der Decider aided and abetted  by the mains stream media who only reported the talking points given to them by the government, when they should have been holding them accountable.

Why shouldn’t one write for power? Here are my reasons:

First, power corrupts. The British historian Lord Acton said: “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This famous quotation has now become political common sense. Its correctness has been borne out by the intensifying corruption in China, where power is exercised without oversight or restraint. When corruption and power exist in co-prosperity, how can people fight corruption? In present-day China, anti-corruption is kept at a certain level to ensure that people will not revolt while power will not get out of control. In some districts, corrupt elements have become leaders of the anti-corruption effort. Undiscovered corrupt officials are fighting those already exposed.

Second, power makes people stupid. By using mathematical theories, the American scholar Jonathan Bendor proves the great value of independent thinking and the limitations of decision makers. When leaders are too busily occupied with myriad state affairs, institutional methods can be used to ease their cognitive constraints, by seeking wise solutions from among the people and encouraging independent thinking in government officials. But in a totalitarian country, such institutional methods do not and cannot exist.

Most power-holders in such countries are fond of dictatorship. Each of them puts forward his “ideas” and “theories” when it is his turn to rule the country, hoping to see his thought adopted as the “guideline” to unify the thinking of the whole nation. Acting in this way, they deprive themselves of the kind of wisdom and talent that are needed to solve the thorny problems facing the country. As a bunch of dumbbells, they can not help becoming an object of ridicule among the people.

Third, power brings flip-flops and hence suffering to the people. Since power has reduced the wisdom and intelligence of the power-holders and their think tanks, setbacks caused by repeated policy changes including the adoption of reactionary measures are bound to occur. Frequent ideological reversals and repeated changes in ideas and policy bring about great social instability. It becomes very difficult to attain a truly harmonious society and avoid more flip-flops in the future.

Fourth, power produces cruelty. Those who hold power can be overwhelmed by the glare of the spotlight that accompanies power. They may experience a peak period in which they feel accomplishment, happiness, or pleasure. But according to Abraham Maslow, the American psychologist, this peak period does not last long. The powerful had problems coping with the end of this period. Once they reject oversight, checks and balances that come from outside, they immediately become completely irrational and inhuman. If someone wants to share power with them or seeks to replace them with new power-holders, they become mad and cruel, and have no scruples in resort to guns, cannons, and tanks, producing huge social disasters.

If you are a writer who writes for power, objectively you are working, directly or indirectly, for corruption and stupidity, for more suffering and cruelty for the people. You may have some excuses if you are forced to write for power. If you write for power out of your own will, how can you evade your responsibility as an accomplice?

As may be easily understood, what I am speaking about is power in a totalitarian state. It is power without oversight and constraints, as compared with power born from democratic elections. Refusing to write for power also means refusing to write according to the will of those in power, or to promote their ideology in one’s writings.

One may choose to write for any other purpose: to write for art, for life, for oneself or others. But he or she must not write for power.

Denial

In Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged she says: "If two men disagree on an issue they discuss it and let reality decide. One may be right, the other wrong, but they both profit."

The one constant in our economic disaster is that all the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street and the neo-cons treat Atlas Shrugged as if it was their economic bible. The last three leaders of the Fed were devoted disciples of Ms Rand and Objectivism, the philosophy she spawned.

There's only one problem with that little quote. It doesn't take into account the human capacity for denial. Some call it skepticism, but skepticism entails the willingness to change one's mind once that which is being doubted has been empirically proven. (Doubting Thomas saying he'd have to see Christ's wounds and place his hands in them.)

I've said all this in preamble to what Michael Prescott posted on his blog today. Michael writes a lot about para psychology and the para normal and he posted a list of all the reasons given for not believing those who practice, accept and believe in them.

The experimenter was lying.

The experimenter was drunk.

The experimenter was insane.

The experimenter was hallucinating.

The experimenter was tricked by some specific (but unproven) ruse.

The experimenter was tricked by some unknown ruse that may be determined in the future.

The experimental protocol was flawed in some specific (but unproven) way.

The experimental protocol was flawed in some unknown way that may be determined in the future.

The equipment malfunctioned.

The photos (or videotape, etc.) were faked.

The witnesses were in cahoots with the experimenter.

The experimenter was in cahoots with the test subject.

The results were a meaningless fluke.

What struck me by this list is that just about the same reasons those objectivists who worship Ayn Rand use for rejecting Evolution, global warming, etc. They have their minds made up don't confuse it with facts.

I'm not much into psychic healing, communicating with the dead, premonitions, and other kinds of mysticism, but this list is about denial not skepticism. 

This Caught My Eye

Damian Whitworth has an article entitled, Is History So Horrible? The website is from England so the arguments deal with a different educational system, but some of his arguments make sense here too. 1. History needs to be taken more seriously, that the emphasis on math, science, basket weaving, feeling good about yourself, etc has shoved history out of the elementary and middle schools, by the time students encounter history classes they don't have a solid basis for understanding. 2. It needs to be presented in an interesting manner 3. There needs to be hands on, field trip, real world instruction.

My only complaint with the article is that those talking about improving education think the panacea for improving education is more technology. Makes you wonder how Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Jesus, Confucius, and all the other great teachers over the centuries educated without smart boards, DVD players, and Sesame Street. The problem with technology is that it gets old very fast. In the 1950's there was a movie called Black Board Jungle. A teacher who had trouble getting his students to pay attention shows a cartoon with a 16mm projector, and miracle of miracles the kids are interested. By the 1960's all schools had 16mm projectors and many teachers only function was to turn them on and fix the film when it broke. By the 1980's all those old reel to reel films were transferred to video. In the 1990's it was computers. Today we have DVD players for movies and documentaries, computers to surf the web, power point presentations provided by the book publisher so you don't have to come up with your own lecture, and many other new gadgets. And for each of the new technologies ( all of which I gladly use) the students were interested in for about one or two years, and then it becomes routine and they shut down. Isn't it time we stopped treating students like a baby in the crib that has to be pacified with rattling car keys?

 By the way I'd like to have a copy of the DVD on the battle of Hastings and a link to the video game.

Name in the paper

I attend Southwest Writers Workshop every month to meet and greet a large number of writers in this area, they have monthly competitions and an annual competition on 33 different genres. Each meeting has a guest speaker and I've written a number of posts where what one of these speakers has said inspired me in one way or another.

Another writers group I go to sometimes is Writers 2 Writers. It meets on the second Monday of every month from 6:30 to 7:30 at a west side Hastings, and though I always intend on going most of the time I hit my self in the head just before I go to bed that night and say, "Oh shit, I forgot again."

About four months ago I told David Correll, who coordinates the group I'd give a presentation. Last night was when I gave it on how to write a hook. When I got there David was really happy. He'd tried for years to get the local paper to say something about these meetings and Sunday's paper had a one paragraph blurb in the living section, last page with the book reviews mentioning that I would be speaking. I'd read the paper, even read the book reviews, but the right hand column that listed book signings and other things I skipped. When I got home I looked at the page again, read that column and sure enough pm Prescott (sic) was mentioned. Did the paper think my initials reflected the fact that the meeting was held in the evening? Oh well, at least they spelled it right.

It was an enjoyable evening. I gave a hand out on what makes good hooks, explained the time I showed Optimus to a Zondervan editor how he cut my first paragraph to ribbons which opened my eyes to why a good hook is so important. A number of those who came (around twelve) shared their first page. They had lots of questions and I even had a handout of cliche opening sentences for them to practice writing a hook from. Unfortunately no one wanted to buy one of my books. The problem with writers groups like this is that they all have a book to sell, but are not all that interesting in buying.

Good Weekend

Saturday did some shopping for DIL, Mom and wife. In the evening I met with a couple of bloggers that normally leave comments at my Captain's blog.

Sunday Grinnygranny and I played a round of golf then had dinner at Mom's. Over all a really good weekend.

Merit Education

Just about everyone thinks they know how to improve education, and they all start by mentioning merit pay and raising test scores.

In the NY Times today some republican retard was praising the charter schools of Harlem for raising their test scores, he even mentioned that they did it by teaching standardized testing in their curriculum. See previous post on gaming the system.

Now on Huffington Post Joel Klein has his lame brain idea of how to improve teaching. Here's his formula:

1. Lower entry barriers for incoming teachers
2. Set up longitudinal data systems to evaluate teacher performance
3. Use outcome based measures to assess teachers
4. Assess and document impact of probationary teachers
5. Makes tenure based on progress measurements and assessments 
6. Bonus and merit pay for teachers in inner-city schools and hard to find subjects like science and math
7. Tenured teachers periodically reassessed on student achievement

Half of this bullshit is pure gibberish and the other half is unrealistic. All of these assessments and measurements of students would still impact a teacher's evaluation years after the teacher had them in his or her class.

Let's take item 1. Lowering entry barriers. It's a mixed bag. Intel has a big plant here and after every lay-off a number of those out-of-a-job use the schools as a back-up. They don't have to do the usual year of pre-student teaching and student teaching. We have an apprenticeship program that lets them come into the classroom. The program changes every year so I'm not sure on all the particulars, but they are supposed to have a mentor teacher keep tabs on them for two years. Those with college degrees in other fields can also go through this program. Some retire military and other business professionals have become teachers this way. They're about as mixed a bag as baby teachers coming right out of college. About half last less than a semester. They find out that about fifty percent of teaching is trying to get the students to: be quiet, stop texting, get their heads up off their desks, stop writing grafitti on the desks, stop talking back and calling me filthy names. Some quit and others find better jobs. Those that can get control of the classroom do just fine. If retiring military were NCO's they do better in the classroom than retired officers as a whole. Officers have never had to deal those under them talking back. A good number of those coming in this route teach only long enough to get an administrators degree and then leave the classroom for the admin ladder.

Items 2-5 and 7 is the attack of the anal retentives. The numbers crunchers want to micro manage the classroom. The classroom is not a laboratory filled with rats or guinea pigs, and I really wish the politicians and colleges of eduction at our universities would stop treating them like they are. Sometimes what we learned from a teacher doesn't kick in for years afterwards. The teacher you hated the most at the time will become the teacher you admire when you reach a higher level of academia and they prepared you better than the teachers you really liked. A hard C has more value than an easy A. Standardized test scores don't gauge this. When all teachers are forced to game the system and teach only how to pass a standardized test instead of the subject the miracle of learning will die. We'll only graduate robots without the metal skeleton.

Item 6 is laughable. Inner cities don't have the tax base or political base for this to happen in the real world. And if you did implement it all those wonderful, successful teachers leaving the suburban, upper middle class schools for the extra pay, would get fired as their measurements and assessments would reflect the ability of students they're teaching.

Snide aside: If all these computerized data measuring systems were correct, wouldn't coaches like Vince Lombardi, Tom Landry, Don Shula. Wouldn't they have won the Super Bowl every year instead of once or twice a decade? I wouldn't matter what kind of athlete was on the team, how much talent they had, the coach is who makes champions. Point being teaching and students are a symbiotic relationship just as coaching and athletes. It takes both working together to make learning possible or winning games possible.

There is nothing on this list that mentions the responsibilities of parents or students in their test scores. These test scores will determine if a teacher makes tenure, or keeps their jobs. How stupid is that?

I've got to brag

Of course my new grand daughter is the most perfect child on the planet. That's because we don't have to get up with her in the middle of the night, I don't have to change diapers, and we only get to hold her and feed her in the evenings. Grinnygranny and Auntypesty were nearly in a knock down drag out last night over who would get to hold her and feed her. She's going to be one really spoiled kid.

Yesterday it was ninety degrees so after school I went to the golf course and played nine holes. I played the back nine and I'm usually happy if I get one par per nine holes. If I'm speaking Greek to non-golfers realize I'm a golf fanatic.

I did my usual bogeys on the first five holes then I don't know what happened. I parred the fifteenth hole (back nine remember). I thought I had my quota and was happy. The sixteenth hole is a short par three and I par it regularly so it was no surprise when I got a par there too. I'm really happy. Then I come to the par 5 seventeenth. This is the hole that is the bane of my existence. It has a water hazard surrounded by tall cottonwoods on the right protecting the dog leg and a gully to the left with Salt Cedars at the bottom, you hit wrong either way just get out a new ball. Many times in the last ten years I've picked up after the tenth stroke and haven't even made it to the green, I've parred it twice. Well yesterday I had a nice drive down the middle of the fairway, a good second shot and as a real surprise overshot the green on my third. The ball was on the second fringe, but the pin was down hill so I putted and it went in for a birdie (one below par for non-golfers). Unfortunately I was playing alone and no one saw it. I did my usual bogey on the last hole, but to have a round with a couple of pars and a birdie has me walking on air.

This winter has been dry and mild leading to mid to late summer scores. I'm getting pumped for summer already.

P A N I C

Wow after sixteen schools closed in our state, delaying all district and state competitions, now the CDC says, "Oops!"

NM got it easy compared to Texas, that really went over the deep end.

Then I read this tidbit, can't remember where right now: It does no good to close schools if the students still come into contact with each other either at day care or the mall.

Mexico had a problem and took sensible measures to solve it. That didn't mean the US had the same problem or needed the radical steps that were imposed. This over reaction is going to do more harm in the long run than any good that might have been gained.

Most reports I've read say the real problem with this flu will come in the fall, and by that time there should be a vaccine.

That said, I give my sincerest condolences for the loss of a Texas teacher who died from this flu and don't wish in anyway to diminish the loss her family feels at this time.

Media Overreaction

Do you get the feeling like this flu possible pandemic is closer to chicken little?

The news media always trot out the Spanish flue of 1918 and the millions that died. One of the textbooks I use places the number at 20 million, the paper last week said 57 million died world wide. Then they mention the Hong Kong Flu and Asian flu in the 60's and 70's where the number was 2.5 million world wide. The other number thrown out is that every year 35 thousand die in the US every year from the normal, common variety flu.

What all this increased attention on the boogeyman flu says there are good things happening in making people aware of infectious diseases. That washing hands often, or cleaning them with anti-bacterial foam, gel, wipes or spray is what we should do all the time, not just when there's a panic.

The down side, is that when this is all over, and it turns out to not be nearly as bad as predicted the general public will become cynical and shrug off all the precautions they've been using.

Prudent precautions need to be taken all the time: washing hands often, keeping counter tops and other surfaces wiped down, getting exercise to keep your immune system working properly, seeing a doctor if you get a high fever with a cold (if you can get in to see him/her within two weeks).

Closing an entire school district of 80,000 because the state had 26 confirmed cases? I don't know seems a little over the top for me.

Monday I get ten e-mails from the school nurse about this flu. I spent about fifteen minutes in all my classes explaining what I'd read in the paper over the weekend. I have students bring in cleaning wipes as their school supplies every fall. I passed out plenty of wipes had them wipe down the desk top, the metal frame and their hands, which I tell them every fall they should do as a matter of course throughout the year. Monday they listened. By Wednesday a few students would come in get a wipe and clean their desk. Today every class comes in and cleans their desks and wipes their hands. I'm getting low on wipes, but I think it's a good thing. If nothing else I'm not having to clean off graffiti.

It has reminded me of college. With only a thousand students at Wayland almost everyone would go to the SUB which had a snack bar. You could always tell which students were taking micro-biology. Most everyone would come in sit down with their order and eat. m-b students would wash their hands, clean the table, clean the chairs, cover the food exposed to air with napkins and were very fun to watch. By the next semester they were over their germ phobia and would be back to normal.

I do hope this "sky-is-falling-in" panic taking place doesn't turn us into Mr. Monk's, at the same time since I started watching that show I have kept my hands much cleaner. 

Making the Grade

All the news outlets today are grading Obama's hundred days. They're grading him on the economy, foreign policy, style of dress, blah blah blah.

Grading him against what? or whom? All assessments must have a standard. That's the problem with all the people giving him grades, they all use a different rubric.

Was he able to turn the economy around? He's done more in 100 days than W did in eight years, but then one step forward is better than a million steps backwards.

Did he get as much legislation passed as FDR? No, but FDR had more months to write the legislation and get his ducks in a row, he wasn't inaugurated until March back then, not January. His first hundred days ended in June, and there's always a flurry of legislation passed just before summer recess.

Still it does make me think of school and if I follow that grading analogy a hundred days would be the equivalent of the very first grade of the very first week of school. He has four years, the final report card won't come out for quite some time. Granted no one wants to start the school year off with a failing grade, but it doesn't mean you'll fail the course. Getting an A on the first grade is also no guarantee that you'll pass the class.

I liked Madeline Albright's comment where she compares this to the first hundred yards of a mile. (I was a miler in high school and college, she's talking my language) The first hundred yards of a mile only gets you into the rhythm of the race, it doesn't determine the outcome.

Baby Boom

We're having a baby boom at my school, and it's not just the students (wish I was kidding). In my department two fellow teachers became fathers on April 21, and yesterday. There are two other teachers expecting soon. Life renewing itself. A wonderful thing.

Proud Grandpa

Abigail is soooo tiny and soooo cute.

Congratulations Are In Order

Bruce, my older brother, is now a grandfather. I beat him by six years. James William Clark born to my niece. Mom is getting a full dose of great-grandkids this year as Bruce's son's wife is expecting toward the end of summer.

Gaming the system

Alright enough about my granddaughter. I'm sure she'll be mentioned many times in the months and years to come.

Over at the Captain I posted a link to the entire transcript of last Friday's Bill Moyer's interview with David Simon of HBO's The Wire. It is an eye opening interview. One of the statements he made concerned an episode of the show on schools and testing. There was a clip in which one of the characters who left the police force to become a teacher figures out that all the statistics being gathered from the testing was just a way to manipulate the newspapers and people into believing that the schools were doing a better job than they actually are. In short gaming the system. That's caused me to reflect on the last twenty seven years of teaching. Bare with me as I go down memory lane.

When I started teaching the only standardized tests (outside of ACT or SAT's) were given to 3rd, 8th and 11th grades. Every summer the numbers would be released in the paper and the only people who used those numbers were real estate agents who could inflate the prices of the houses in the districts of the schools that had the highest numbers. Other than that nobody did much with them.

When George I was elected president and the cold war ended the republicans shifted their boogey man from Russia to American schools. Reagan laid the groundwork with his Presidential commission which produced a report called: A Nation At Risk. This is when the drum beat for yearly testing started. Naturally the NEA and AFT were against this, the argument being that teachers are hired to teach the subjects, if testing were to be done yearly teachers would be forced to teach students how to pass the tests, not history or English, or Algebra, etc.,which is why there is the constant shrilling about how the Unions are against improving the schools. Tell a lie loud enough and often enough and sooner or later people start believing it. Our legislature responded by creating a Competency Test that all public schools students must pass to get a diploma. If you don't pass it you get a certificate of attendance. The test is given to sophomores which gives them two years to make up any part of the test before graduation, and if there is still a part of the test not passed they have until they are twenty-two to pass it. Most pass it the first time. The GED is twice as hard as this test, and a passing grade is kept in the 40% range. In other words: Big Waste Of Time and Tax Payer Dollars, but the politicians could pat themselves on the back and boast that the were improving education in this state.

 The other demon in education is dropouts. There became a concerted effort to identify "students at risk" of dropping out. While teaching 7th and 8th grade English we had so called experts in identifying these students come to our school, take them out of class and give them a pep talk, and somehow all the money that paid these experts salaries was supposed to be translated into few of these students not quitting school. Meanwhile we were picketing before and after work hours to get a two percent pay increase that year.

By the Clinton administration even the democrats were joining the testing bandwagon. New tests came in, more grades were added to those needing to be tested, and as our school buildings deteriorated, as teachers retired and fewer and fewer college graduates looked at a starting teacher's salary and concluded that there was no way in hell they could pay off their students loans and live with this small an amount, more and more money was being drained away to pay for all the new tests. More faculty had to be hired to coordinate and administer the tests, fewer weeks were being spent on instruction and is now devoted to testing.

Then APS hired a superintendent who knew how to game the system. He negotiated a contract that specified that if certain goals were met he got bonuses. One of those bonuses was if the drop out rate was lowered. And he did it. He changed the way drop outs were counted. Previously a school would have the count of freshmen who enrolled at a certain high school and subtracted all those students four years later who graduated from that high school. The difference was your drop out rate. If you had six hundred freshmen and four years later your graduating class was three hundred you had a 50% dropout rate. Really pretty simple.

Dr. A had the dropout rated calculated by how many seniors enrolled and subtracted how many graduated at the end of that school year. So if you enrolled 330 seniors and 300 graduated then you only had 30 dropouts and that came to less than 10%. Amazing how he got his bonus that year. The newspapers and tv anchors were all singing his praises. He lowered APS's dropout rate by 30% in one year. It's stunning how easy it is to trick MSM with cooked books.

The Der Decider was elected. No Child Left Behind was hailed as a milestone for education. We began calling it "Leave No Child A Dime." Testing now comes with consequences. If schools don't reach a certain level of proficiency they lose money, teachers can be reassigned to other schools, the state or federal governments can come in and require better training so on and so forth. Every year the proficiency goes up until all schools will have all students at a 100% proficiency by 2012. The perfect recipe for every year letting the media squeal about how terrible our schools are. It is an impossible standard to meet, and then Bushco pulled the rug out from under it by refusing to fund all the federal mandates that had to be met. Even neocon heaven Utah screamed foul.

For the last eight years and counting from February to April there is very little instruction going on. It's all testing. Freshmen are tested one week, all other students stay home. Then Sophomores, get the picture. In the fall we have two practice testing days where we simulate the testing to get them ready. We have thirty minutes added onto one class every Wednesday were all student have to answer a math question, then we discuss how to get points on the test even if you don't know the answer! It's easy, each question has four points, you get one point if you rephrase the question, one point for attempting to figure it out, and two points for getting it right. Even if you get every question wrong if you do steps one and two you have a 50%. I'm not making this up.

On our In-Service days for two years years we had a testing cheerleader come with fancy posters, snappy phrases, and the secret of how we could get our students to pass these tests. They won't let us know how much was spent flying this guy here to give us this pep talk, or how much we spent buying his fancy posters that we all had to put up in our rooms. Want to know the big secret? Have the students underline key question words like who, what, when, where, why, and how. Then on the multiple choice answers cross out the answers they knew to be wrong so they could focus on the two answers that come close to being right. There's big bucks in selling snake oil to superintendents today.

The reason given for all of this testing was that it would identify the schools that need the most help and the government would come in to set things right. As David Simon points out it's really all about gaming the system. Are the students getting a better education today when most schools can claim that their test scores show improvement? Or has it just taken a few years for the schools to know how to manipulate the statistics.

The Joys of being a Grandfather

New baby's are wonderful, but they're even more wonderful as grandchildren. Abigail is precious, but with E, C, auntypesty, grinnygranny,  and Mom being there to feed, rock, change diapers it's so much less work for me than when my two came along.

And have things changed since they were born! C had a nice hospital room which had a real wide ledge up against the window, there was a twin mattress on it and E spent the night in the room. A whole lot better than a recliner or chair to sleep in. So far the only one having a hard time is Daniel, who can't understand why he has to be quiet so much. Three year olds are not naturally quiet.

Another perk of being a grandpa is that you can get out of the house and play golf.

I walked the full 18 holes yesterday, normally I walk nine or ride 18. It was tiring. This was the first time I played Kirkland AFB's course. It was nice. You just have to know someone with base privileges to get in. The two guys I've been playing with most of the winter invited me to join them, which was nice. The grass around the greens is coming out. During the winter you can usually putt onto the green, my chipping game is really rusty, but it's still a lot of fun.

The header is the latest painting by Anne Littlewolf. I just love her work.

Baby Time

Grinnygranny and I have a new granddaughter, named Abigail. She arrived at 10:26 this morning. Mother and child are doing well.  7lbs 2oz.

Waiting

E's girlfriend went in last night and the doctor was going to induce labor. We haven't heard anything yet. Will post when our new granddaughter arrives.

Pleasant Day

I hope everyone had a nice Easter, or memorable Passover.

We had a simple meal. Mom came over and we had a pleasant time talking about many different things. Living alone Mom likes to have someone to talk with.

We watched the Masters and it was very entertaining, though we were rooting for either Tiger or Michelson to pull off an upset. Kenny Perry had it in his grasp and let it get away.

Feeling better

• Grinnygranny has had a cold for two weeks, she's still congested, but feeling better, and I came down with it Monday. I got through classes and stayed home the rest of the week. We did have Friday as a holiday. It was good that those three days were testing and I didn't have to leave lesson plans or worry about a sub being eaten alive by my students. Intestinal flu the a couple of weeks ago and now this. We are tired of not feeling well.
  
• I felt good enough yesterday to play a round of golf, but was real weak the last few holes.
  
• Today we've been getting something rather unusual around here -- rain. We need it badly, it's been very dry this year.
  
• Went grocery shopping this morning. Mom's coming over tomorrow for Easter dinner. We thought about going out, but when all the clan is together that becomes expensive.
  
• Thursday C thought her water broke, E took her to the hospital. It turned out to be a false alarm. Next week the doctor plans to induce if the baby doesn't decide to come on her own. It won't be long now before we become grandparents again.
  

Must Read

Stop by at Michael Manning's blog to wish him a happy birthday. He has one of the most touching posts I've read in many many visits to blogland.
He's a Steve McQueen aficianado and every year has a Film Festival that honors him. His insights into McQueen's life and movies is always eye opening. After having read his posts I've seen Junior Bonner, Bullit, and Le Mans, flicks that I missed growing up. Grinnygranny and I have really enjoyed them.

The Value of the Mustang

Auto bailouts and breakups are filling the news lately. Obama's Car Czar forced the dimwit at GM out. Chrysler could disappear as far as I'm concerned -- see previous post at Captain's Log. It was bought from Mercedes by a private consortium that included Dan Quayle. Now there's a recipe for disaster. Maybe Fiat can salvage it.

Notice of the Big 3 only Ford has not asked for a bailout. Why? I'll tell you why. The Mustang.  

GM and Chrysler have a competing sports car to go against the Mustang, but they've both been stupid on the price.

The Mustang is a sports car if you put in a V8 engine and fancy it up. The GT and Cobra are really hot. They sell for 30 grand and up. But it's also an economy car. With the V6 and basic package it gets good mileage and sells from 18 thousand to 24 thousand. That's why everywhere you look Mustangs are all over the road.

GM in a fit of pure insanity killed the Camero, and when it decided to bring it back took four years after the design was released to bring it to market. It was in the Transformers movie and two years later you still couldn't buy one. That's just plain stupid. Now that it's finally hitting the market they sell for Fifty grand. Why not just buy a Corvette? Do they really need two top of the line sports cars?

Chrysler brought back the Charger, but made it a four door killing whatever sporty or economy value it could have had and upping the price. When they finally brought back the Challenger they priced it from 45 to 60 grand.

Both of these cars, and I'd love to have either one, start at what the Mustang sells for at its top end. If the Mustang started at this price you wouldn't see many of them either. 

That was the genius of Lee Iocoa who came up with the car in 1964. A people's sports car. The Camaro and Challenger were developed to compete with the Mustang, which they did from the mid sixties until the mid eighties. Pontiac's version, the Trans Am was about the biggest selling car of the seventies thanks to the Smokey and The Bandit movies. 

If either of these car companies had a lick of sense the Challenger and Camero would be priced around 20 thousand with a V6 or Turbo 4 cylinder engines and they would sell like hot cakes, just like the Mustang. In fact many people might trade in their Mustangs to get the next best sporty economy car. But Corporate thinking is too dense to figure this out. 

Where's the next Lee Iococa?