So much of Star Trek with its communicators, tablets, talking computers, medical technology has already happened.

No, we don't have warp drive, photon torpedoes and spaceships capable of traveling the galaxy with a crew of 500. 3D printing is coming close to fabricators, just not for food yet.

Of all the technology I would like the transporter. 

It would be great to step onto the pad and I'm in the office, or at the mall, or at Roadhouse Steakhouse. A few jumps and I'm visiting my brother in Oklahoma.

In voyager one of the women has a baby delivered by transporter. I remember all the women and they were the majority in the teacher's lounge saying, "That's the way to have a baby!" or words to that affect.

A Friend in Need

 Aerial view of Del Norte High School, circa 1972. Today there is no parking lot, the main building is gone and what looks like a three-story office building dominates the side facing Montgomery Boulevard. Del Norte Baptist Church across the street is now completely hidden by apartment buildings.

In 1997 my parents drove to Pueblo, CO. to Dad's 50th reunion. Mom kidded him, saying "Did you really go to school with all those grey-haired women?"

Now it's my turn.

My God! Fifty years go by in a blink and getting into contact with people I haven't rubbed shoulders in decades, all of a sudden, the memories come back. The sorrowful part is the number of classmates many I went through Junior High and High school with are no longer with us.

I read the names recognizing friends and foes, some since the size of our class was so large, I didn't know, but recognized their yearbook faces. One name stood out for me.

Class of 72:

KARDOKUS - Memorial services for Daniel Charles Kardokus will be held at 3 p.m., April 8 at New Life Chapel, Foursquare, 500 N. Washington. Daniel was born March 12, 1954 in Los Angeles, Calif., to Charles and Wilma (Palmer) Kardokus. He went to be with the Lord on March 21, 2001, at the age of 47

Danny and I had little in common. I was the athlete, and he was chubby and clumsy. I was always mentioned in the school paper sports section, he was never mentioned. We ran in completely different circles. In high school we didn't share many of the same classes.

What we did have in common was our faith. McKinley Junior High was 60% Hispanic. in 7th grade Danny and I were Anglo and didn't go to the same elementary schools, so we didn't have any friends. There is no grade in school worse than 7th grade and for both of us it was pure hell.

For that year he was the one person I could encourage, and he encouraged me by our belief in Jesus. He was Pentecostal and I was a Baptist. I went to the church across the street from the school. That didn't matter we shared a faith in Jesus.

In high school we met during lunch or before school and talked. He was effeminate in manner and speech. The jocks always gave me a funny look while we were laughing and joking together.

After graduation we lost contact. I went to college on a track scholarship and most of my high school classmates were out of my thoughts. Then a funny thing happened in 1989.

We had a Volkswagen Westphalia and, on a Saturday decided to go camping. Son was 8 and daughter 3. We drove to a state park not far from Albuquerque, pitched a tent for daughter to stay out of the sun and she had her toys to keep happy. We played a little baseball with plastic balls and bat with my son. That lasted about thirty minutes and we were attacked by gnats. A swarm of them and they were biting. Decided not to set up the badminton net. This wasn't fun anymore.

We packed up and went home. A few hours later I got a phone call, this was when we were in the phone book and had a land line. Danny called. He and his wife and two children were in town and their car broke down. His grandparent surprisingly lived a block away from wife's parents. He wanted to know if we could pick him up and drive them to the other side of the river.

It was a good thing we had the Westphalia, and we were back in town. We picked them up and took them to a diner for dinner then down to his grandparents. We had a great time catching up, his wife and mine talked, which is rare for my wife who is rather shy around strangers. His kids and our kids had a great time in the back of the van, good thing there weren't any seatbelt laws at that time. 

We stopped afterwards and paid a surprise visit to wife's parents. On the way home it was crazy, but did God send a plague of gnats so we would be there to help a friend in need?

WC092122

 Today's challenge is: What is your least favorite chore and why?

Sorry if this is icky, but cleaning the bathroom is at the top.

My wife's attitude is, "You make the mess, you clean it up."

I have to do this chore not only at home, but at the office. Since I get to spend time writing for free, (I used to get paid, but pleadings are now done electronically) still I get the mail, let S. know if he needs to come in or not and keep the place clean. If you stay on top of it not a big deal.

WC 091422 What makes you buy a book?

 Today's challenge is, what makes you pick up or buy a book?

1. It's recommended. I've bought a number of books mentioned in Top Ten Tuesday and Wednesday Challenge, as well as Berthold Gambrel.

2. The author. Tony Roberts, Mark Dawson, James Clavell, Tom Clancy, are recent authors that when they come out with a new book, I download it or buy it. I'm strictly e-book due to eyesight issues.

3. The bandwagon, if there is a current book that everyone is raving about and it's in a genre, I enjoy I'll give it a try. This is hit and miss. I've tried to read a book everyone was raving about and couldn't get past twenty pages.

4. The title or book cover catches my eye.

This is one, and I enjoyed it and all the others that followed.

5. Book by blogger friend or a local author I know from Southwest Writers or Writers2writers.

Hank Bruce, Dr. Irene Blea, Jonathan Miller, Joseph Badal, Paula Paul, Berthold Gambrel, Audrey Driscol and others.

6. Twice a year the downtown library in the basement lets you buy books by the bag at only six dollars a bag. My only exception to hard copy books, I pick hard cover where the print is bigger.

WC: Favorite Plot Line

 

Today's challenge is my favorite plot line to read or watch.

I'm going to toot my own horn here. My favorite plot line is Redemption.

Optimus is a hard living, strong drinking Roman legionnaire only interested in his basic needs and pleasure.

He's assigned to guard a pesky Jew while awaiting trial. The Apostle Paul.

 He is converted to Christianity and his life is transformed. He marries and fathers two sons. He stops getting drunk and gambling and tries to right the wrongs he committed before his conversion.

While serving in the Praetorian Guard along with other Believers in The Way plots to place a Christian on the Eagle Throne.

Eugene Vanders is a happily married university professor with a fifteen-year-old daughter. He's well respected and is content.

His house is invaded by the police, and they plant drugs in order to arrest him. He's tried and sentenced to three years in minimum security. He loses his reputation, livelihood, and while in jail his wife is raped and murdered, his daughter commits suicide. (I did not describe these events.)

He tells to judge while sentenced that he will make Billy the Kid look like a boy scout and vows he will make all those who ruined his life pay for what they did.

He was working with simi conductor material and had come up with an idea to create lift by electrifying small holes creating mini tornados.

Once out of prison along with his dorm mates they create Magic Carpet Inc. and start using the Magic Carpet plates to make cars fly.

As he becomes rich with his new invention, he is able to uncover the police chief's policy called plan B, that when a raid finds nothing, they plant evidence. 

In the book Vander's never kills anyone, he forgives those who ruined his life, and he makes society pay in order to regain what he lost. Berthold Gambrel in his review called Vander's the anti-Walter White.

Penguins at the Rio Grande Zoo

 Last week wife, daughter and I went to the Zoo. First time for us to see the new Penguin exhibit.

You can't use flash to take pictures, so I used video on my regular camera. 

Here's what you see when you first walk in.

Be sure to click on the button in the lower right-hand corner to see full screen

Here's one of the exhibits. Look at all the different kinds of Penguins!

Here's some frolicking.

WC Plot Line

 

Today's challenge is: Plot line or theme you refuse to watch.

I watched one season of Criminal Minds. Wife and I decided we did not want to understand or think like serial killers.

I watched Psycho as a teenager. That was enough, no mad slasher movies that tally up dead teenagers caught having sex.

I've watched almost all of Alfred Hitchcock's other movies and not had a problem.

I'm turned off by what passes as humor in movies today. Someone playing with a man's intestines thinking it's a movie prop is sad, not funny. Seeing women trying on bride's maid's dresses and having diarrhea is gross not funny.

I watched Carrie and have never read anything of Steven King's horror books or seen any other of his movies. My brother made me watch The Green Mile while I visited him, I could have done without the part of the guy being electrocuted painfully. I do own a copy of his book on writing.

I enjoyed reading Anne Rice's vampire, mummies, and other supernatural books, she wasn't gross or trying to freak you out. Her historical novels Cry to Heaven and Feast of All Saints are wonderful. 

TTT: Microhistory

 

Today's topic a school freeby, I'm joining Lydia in doing micro history, As per Wikipedia, microhistory “is the intensive historical investigation of a well defined smaller unit of research (most often a single event, the community of a village, a family or a person)

Wow biography is micro history, who knew.

Guess what, I Maury qualifies. The life and times of truly great scientist who changed transportation on the oceans dramatically. He is the father of Oceanography.

Other biographies come to mind:

William Manchester's American Caesar, biography of Douglas McArthur.

Elizabeth Jenkin's Elizabeth the Great, biography of Queen Elizabeth I.

Charles W. Ferguson's Naked to Mine Enemies, biography of Cardinal Wolsey.

Topical micro history would be:

Basil Lidell Hart's Strategy and World War II.

John Keegan's Face of Battle, World War I, Fields of Battle, and History of War.

In Remembrance of My Twin.

 

Coming Storm by Anne Littlewolf.

1953-2022.

It's hard to start telling everyone about my spiritual twin. 

We met at Wayland Baptist College as freshmen in 1972. At that time, she was Patricia (Pat) Penny. Her father was pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Farmington, NM. 

For six months I lived in Farmington and attended that church. That led to our introduction, and that's all you needed with Trish, as we called her.

She never met a stranger. She was friendly with everyone and hard not to like.

Our names were so close that professors and other students would get confused. I was called by her last name and she mine. We laughed about it and decided we must be twins. From then on, we called each other twin.

We were both history/English majors and chess players. We talked a lot of history and played a lot of chess over those years.

Till the last time we met and laughed over lunch we talked about Mrs. Jamar's Literature classes and living and dying by Kate Turabian's style book for term papers. 

She liked to crochet in the TV room of the Sub to relax. Two of her closest friends kidded her about be a granny and she started talking like a cranky woman, they imitated her, and it caught on. They decided they were a sorority sisters in Omicron Beta, it stood for Old Biddies. She was the last one, Judy passed in 2019, Nora in 2021.

One time she was in the TV room all alone and watching Englebert Humperdinck in concert. Two guys came in and changed the channel to a football game. They never knew what hit them. 

Judy was my first wife. She was engaged to David, but his mother broke them up. We started dating and Trish became engaged to David. Both our marriages ended in divorce. She had a daughter named Karen Sue, and she is now working at the Smithsonian Institute in D. C.

I remember in Spring of 1976; we had a class together. She was six months pregnant and showing. The class was held in an old auditorium in Gates Hall. We sat in theater seats. I'd sit next to her trying to take notes without a desk and fussed at her as she used her tummy, that it she had an advantage.

We graduated and lost touch. I didn't go to the 10th class reunion, and she wasn't there for the 20th. Nora told me she was in an abusive marriage. At our 30th reunion, she wasn't there, but Nora had her phone number and e-mail.

She legally changed her name to Ann Littlewolf, was remarried and living in Gunnison, CO. We got in contact, and she drove down for a twin reunion. It was like thirty years never happened.

Linda and I drove up and spent a night and got to see her horses, then went on to Nebraska to visit Linda's brother and family. it's a long drive from Gunnison to Lincoln.

For a while she taught at BIA schools in the Four Corner's area but quit to become an artist.

She had horses and they were her life. She and her husband rode them, and she bought an 1890 Surrey that she fixed up and trained her horse to pull. They'd ride it at county fairs in the area and take friends out on rides. 

She wrote and illustrated a children's book. 

She was living with a man, and was driving, as they were talking, he slumped and died from an aneurism. The book was her catharsis. How she learned to go through grief and go on. I particularly like how she handled loss.

APS has a place where teachers can mass produce work. You just had to pay for the materials used. I took her pages and had them copied on card stock, laminated and bound. She could only afford twenty copies, but at Kinkos it would have been three times the cost. 

They sold out very fast. I sold some at book signings. I sold two to a cancer doctor, he said he'd put them in his waiting room.

I retired and couldn't use APS anymore, so I desktop published them. My printer couldn't use cardstock, so they were on regular paper, and I couldn't laminate them, but they were easy to copy and with a square hole binder were easy to publish.

She came down with some of her artwork and found a cafe in Old Town that would let her put up paintings on commission. Coming Storm was one of them, the others were paintings on tree bark.

I would from time to time go into the cafe and check on them for her. She called and said the guy who owned the cafe's phone was disconnected. I went down to the place it had been gutted. Nothing was left on the wall. The paintings were gone most likely tossed in the trash by the new owner when he started renovating.

She gave me two of her paintings that I framed and have on my wall at home. The first one I call Aspens in Colorado.

The other one is Line Wolf. 

She came down here as the altitude in Gunnison was becoming a problem. She stayed with Mom while her husband was selling their place and trying to find a place for them and their horses. Mom was having some medical problems and she moved in with another lady in the Baptist community. 
They settled in Tijeras Canyon, not far from Albuquerque. I talked her into redoing Finn and Flipper as a coloring book. She did and I've published a number of them.

When Mom sold her townhouse and moved into senior living, she and her husband help with the move. Mom loved Anne like her own daughter.

Anne's church's choir on one Sunday a month would stop and the Senior living place and sing. I took Mom to church, and she insisted after I got her back that we listen to the choir, and Anne naturally made me sing with them.

We kept up with each other on Face Book, it was easier to message than e-mail. Every few months we'd meet at a restaurant and catch up. I always made sure Linda came too. They became friends,

Covid stopped any attempt at selling copies. When my mother went into hospice, I gave what remaining copies to the kind ladies who helped my mother with her last days. They were grateful.

A year ago, we met at Papa Filipe's, laughed a lot and had a good time. A couple of months later she stopped messaging, e-mailing or answering her phone.

In November she wrote an e-mail saying she'd been ill and couldn't work on her art, she'd shifted from oil to colored pencil and crayon. They were amazing.

In February another e-mail said she had an aggressive cancer. I had no way to contact her directly. I started checking the Journal's online obits, but never saw one. Today I finally called the church where she was on the governing council, and they told me she passed on April 10. If there was an obit in the paper, I never saw it. 

When she lived in Gunnison, she painted a mural at a nursing home in the ward for Alzheimer's patients. It was a mountain scene with a fence and a gate across the door. They had trouble with the patients getting out, with the gate there they stopped trying.

Those who bought her work was John Denver and Ricky Skaggs. Ann and her husband went to a festival in Windstar, CO. This is where John Denver's legacy is preserved. She took a number of paintings and gave them for the foundation to sell. They chose two paintings of Eagles to put on a wall.

She had her work in a number of places in Edgewood on I-40 and she'd let me know whenever one of her works sold.

She will be sorely missed. 

  

WC One day in my past.

 

Today's challenge is where I would spend one day in my past.

Picture is of the first NAIA Texoma conference championships in May 1974. The runner I was passing was from Australia running for Dallas Baptist. I beat him in the mile, and he lapped me in the three-mile.

Oooh a tough one.

There is one day that changed everything for me. I can't give the actual date, but here's what happened.

It was between nationals at the 1974 cross country championships, where I ran the race of my life, and the start of track season in February 1975.

I went out on an eight-mile run and felt good. Coming back to campus. I went up to the back door of the gym and found it was locked. I stupidly did an about face, like taught in my high school AFJROTC class. Something twisted in my right knee.

Also, stupidly I applied a heating pad to it when I got back to the dorm. A few years later sports doctors advised ice when a swelling injury occurs.

To train for the mile and three mile takes two or three days a week in long distance like an eight-mile run. Usually Monday and Wednesday, Tuesdays and Thursday for interval runs, 16 220's with a walk that distance between, 8 440's win a one lap walk or 4 880's with one lap walk. This is to keep speed up for the sprint at the end of the race.

What I found about my knee was that on intervals where I was running fast, I didn't feel anything. On over distance I had a nagging ache. Running that way was like water torture.

By the time the season started I was still in good condition, but in a month my conditioning was gone. My times and places suffered. The coach dropped me from the team.

I had been running track since 7th grade, earned a track scholarship and now junior year in college and it was all over.

Since then, I've seen pro football players injured the same way, they plant their foot and twist to change direction and they go down career over. Tony Dorsett did it in practice with the Denver Broncos, Bam Morris (Atlanta Falcons) did it on national TV against the Cowboys.

If could get in a time machine I'd tell the young fool, don't go to that door.

Then again, maybe I'd tell myself not to get married to my first wife in May of 1975.

Top Ten Tuesday

 Today's meme is ten favorite books more than ten years old.

I'm upping it to ten favorite authors.

Barry Sadler, his Casca: The Eternal Mercenary series. Taken over by Tony Roberts is now 56 books and counting.

Isaac Asimov, Science Fiction, History, Religion, hard science like the book pictured. He did it all with knowledge, humor, and style.

You think the pioneers of science fiction were Victor Hugo and Jules Verne, don't forget Andre Norton. She invented the galactic empire. She invented the star gate.

 A man who changed the way war was fought between WWI and WWII, A British captain and wrote the book Strategy. A treatise on historical battles using the indirect approach. The French and English dismissed it, the Germans used it to destroy them at the beginning of the war. The United States used it learning from our allies past mistakes. Island hopping in the Pacific is a prime example of the indirect approach.

One of the twentieth centuries greatest theologian, murdered by the Nazi's for helping Jews and others escape to Switzerland. The shame is that he was only beginning on his philosophy and cut short. He lived his beliefs and died by them.

Known for her book the Thorn Birds and subsequent mini-series, this was her life work. Starting with the rise of Marius through to the rise of Octavian a hundred-year stretch encompassing the life of Julius Caesar. I've read it through at least three times, when writing my books Optimus and Stephanus all of the social dynamics of Rome came from these books. History Channel should make a soap opera based on them there is enough fodder here for at least ten or more years in that format.

Mary Stewart wrote many different books, but her Arthurian books based on the life of Merlin, not Arthur was ground-breaking at the time.

Hank Bruce is a great friend and has a wonderful wit. Most of his writing is horticulture and gardening, but he branches out on other things. He works with those around the world on planting the Moringa tree to help end world hunger. He has a children's book explaining the merits of this miracle tree.

He is the only one who has read all of my books and written a review on Amazon.

Irene Blea is another friend and member of Writers2writers. She started as a professor and wrote the still available books on Chicana studies. She has a trilogy on the life of her aunt who was sold in the early 1900's as a wife to an old man at age 13. It's hard to image Daughters as being past ten years. It's still an open wound in Albuquerque where 7 women and an unborn child were found murdered and buried on the West Mesa.

It takes the life of a woman whose daughter is missing and fears as the bodies are being dug up that one of them might be hers.

I am a Tony Roberts junky. I can't get enough. As mentioned earlier he now has 26 Casca books. This is the Dark Blade series now with seven books and counting. A half-dark elf and human growing up reviled and shunned, when her mother dies, she discovers she's a princess of the dark elves and her father has left her a quest to rebuild his following and take over the throne of the dark elves.

He has a Kastania series on the rebirth of an empire before it is destroyed by the greedy nobility 

And a series on a rock band with a woman lead named Siren.

Why none of Anne McCaffrey's dragon books haven't been made into movies or TV series is mind boggling. I want a fire lizard as a pet.

Bonus, Harlan Ellison. The writer who has influenced me more than any other. An absolute horrible person, but a great writer.

He was a screen writer who wrote The City on the Edge of Forever for the original Star Trek series. 

Honorable mentions: Zane Grey, James A. Michener, William Manchester, Thomas B. Costain, James Clavell, Tom Clancy, Joseph Badal, Anne Rice and many more.

I'm an old man that has always had a voracious appetite for reading.

WC 080322

 

's

Last Wednesday was crazy and I didn't get to post pictures of my library. It's not very big anymore. My eyesight won't let me read hard copy anymore and I've given most of my books away to Big Brothers and Big Sisters. I have an extensive library on my Kindle. I've replaced many of the books I gave away as e-books.

Today's challenge is the weirdest food I love.

Quite a challenge, I'm not very adventurous when it comes to food, as a diabetic I am on a pretty strict diet, not that I stay on it much as my A1C tells me.

This is from an old (early 1960's) TV advertisement from Kraft recipes. Take Philidelphia Cream Cheese and a can of chopped olives. Mix together, chill in the fridge and spread on celery. Good on Ritz vegetable crackers too.

I like a can of Chili with beans and add a packet of crushed red chile.

Instead of putting pickle relish on a hot dog I use chopped green chile. Costco sells small packets of green chile in a bundle. Not weird in New Mexico.

I like Thai food but made the mistake of once ordering it Thai hot. Hot is equal to Habanero, Thai hot could strip the enamel off of a car. An experience only to be done once. 

My Mom once tried to cook beef tongue, but never again we wouldn't eat it.

Sorry no snails or frog's legs and I shudder at the thought of raw fish.

  

WC 072022 Weekend Getaway

 Today's challenge is to describe the perfect weekend getaway.

We're retired so we don't need to find time alone, we're alone together all the time. We really didn't quarantine during Covid, things didn't change that much.

So, to me the perfect weekend getaway would be to fly to Oklahoma City, we have a three day/ two-night free trip we haven't been able to use for the last year and its good for another year. 

My brother and his wife live in Oklahoma City and my wife's brother and wife live in Wichita, Kansas. We usually drive to Oklahoma and spend a night then on to Kansas for a night and drive home. It would be nice to fly and have them all meet at the hotel for a get together. Having our kids and grandkids there to meet their cousins would be a plus.

I wanted to do this in the Spring, but they were both busy. I'm trying to pull it off for the fall, there is no way I'm going there in Summer!

It would be nice for all of us to visit the memorial site where the Murrah Federal Building once stood.

WC 071322

 

Today's challenge is Which character from a book you like to meet. Okay, one male, one female.

Captain-Pilate Blackthorne, or Anjin-San from Shogun.

Captain-Pilate Blackthorne lands in a hostile land, unable to speak the language, in a totally unfamiliar culture and by using his wits and knowledge he's able to not only survive but thrive.

Alexis Carew is a young girl from a planet on the fringe of civilization. She joins the Navy as a mid-shipman when the top brass doesn't think a woman belongs in the Navy at all much less as an officer. She has to fight the insubordination of the crew as well as the misogyny of the commanders and still do her job, which she not only accomplishes, but is able to advance.

Favorite Books

Plot: A ship crashes and the only survivor finds himself in a strange environment surrounded by strange looking inhabitants and he doesn't understand the language.

He's taken in and given a female interpreter so the natives can pump him for information.

He falls in love with his interpreter and finds out from her that they are in the middle of a civil war and his advanced technology and knowledge could be the deciding factor to win the war.

In a fight his interpreter is killed, but he helps his side win the war.

When I read James Clavel's book Shogun, I was thinking all through it that I've read this plot before. This was a couple of months before the mini-series was due out and I wanted to have read the book first.

Years earlier I joined the Science Fiction Book Club and one of the first books that came from there was Brothers of the Earth by C.J. Cherryh.

The ship was a spaceship, where he landed was a planet and the inhabitants were aliens.

There's a whole lot of differences between the books, sheer volume the most striking, but it's important to remember that just because the plot is the same (think all quest stories) the writing makes all the difference.

BTW, I read this book from cover to cover in a single night. It was that good. Wish to God that I could have said that about Shogun. 

WC070622 Famous person(s)

 

Today's challenge is: Have you ever met a famous person.

I posted a couple of weeks ago about Don Perkins passing away. He was an all-American football player at UNM and played for the Dallas Cowboys as at running back. He played in the days of Don Meridith, Bob Hayes, Bob Lilly, and Tom Landry, when the 'boys were new and had growing pains. He played in the Ice Bowl game, was out by the time of their first Superbowl win.

After retiring he moved to Albuquerque. He spent time reading the sports on a local channel, worked with high school religious clubs like Young Life and Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

My brother was the captain of the FCA at high school, I was in Junior high. He arranged for Don to come to our house and speak to the members of FCA. He forgot to tell Mom. When he showed up and Mom answered the door she was shocked to in her words, "See the biggest black man in my life."

This was the early sixties and Albuquerque was 50% Hispanic, 30% Anglo and the rest was black, Asian and Native American. My junior high and high school didn't have any blacks until I was a sophomore.

Bruce showed up with a carload of jocks just about that time.

I was also in Young Life, we'd meet at a house once a week, from our high school, usually on Thursday night. We'd sing songs, give testimony and pray. In the summer we'd have gatherings at a hotel banquet room with students from all over the city. Don Perkins came and spoke at a number of them and personally shook hands with everyone there.

I never asked him for his autograph, younger and dumber back then.

I've read all of Joseph Badal's books, he's a New York Times bestselling author that lives in Cedar Crest, the other side of Sandia Mountain. I bought two of them at Treasure House books in Old Town at his book signings. He writes spy thrillers similar to Tom Clancy. They are very good. 

He also has a series of an ex-seal that's a doctor and has a drug lord that keeps trying to kill him. 

Another is about two female detectives in Albuquerque similar to Cagney and Lacy. 

The last person is only within Baptist circles and New Mexico politics.

Before I was a teacher, I was a music director at Edgewood Baptist Church. It's a spot in the road on your way into Albuquerque on I-40. 

I was working at a car dealership flagging technicians after they finished a repair and doing warranty. I was also teaching the adult Sunday school class before services.

My very first Sunday as teacher David King and his wife chose to attend and join the church. They were opening a real estate office in the town. 

He was the nephew of our then Governor Bruce King. He was working in the state cabinet. He was also the chairman of the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. One of the most influential of all the committees of the convention.

To say the least I was a little intimidated trying to teach the lesson that day.

  

Book Review: Echos of the Past

 

The beauty of Prime Unlimited. Three books considered as one on the rental list.

Peter Rimmer has a ten-book series set in Africa starting in the 1880's

The Pirate, Archibald Brigandshaw, owner of a major British shipping line wants the Brigandshaw family line to join the aristocracy. His oldest son Arthur he arranges to marry a poor aristocrat with title and mansion. Sir Henry Mandeville is a widower with a sixteen-year-old daughter, Emily. When Arthur weds her, and she has a son then a Brigandshaw inherits the castle, mansion and title.

Sounds rather Bridgerton at this point.

The hitch is that the Pirate's youngest son, Sebastian and Emily are in love and let nature take its course.

The Pirate sends his son on one of his ships to Bombay with orders he can't return for 18 months.

When the ship docks in Cape Town, the captain of the ship takes pity on the young man and gets an elephant hunter, who supplies him with tusks, to take him under his wing and train him to kill elephants. This is how Africa becomes the focus of the books.  

I'm on the second book Elephant Walk, which is the farm Sebastian creates in the Veld after he returns in the first book to kidnap Emily and his son Harry along with the nanny who marries Tinus Oosthuizen, the elephant hunter and sets up a farm next to Sebastian's.

The Pirate puts a price on Sebastian's head for kidnapping the heir to the title, even knowing the boy is not Arthur's son.

Sebastian gets arrested, as telegraph lines span the globe now, but is found not guilty when Emily testifies that Arthur never consummated the marriage preferring to live in London with his mistresses.  

It gets complicated, but the historical facts are astounding.

You know Cecil Rhodes was one miserable son-of-bitch. He insisted on building a railroad line from Cape Town to Cairo, this extended British control through the Boer States. This led to the Boer wars.

The Krugerand is the South African gold coin named after Paul Kruger, the Prime Minister of the South African Republic. He refused to let the British settlers coming into their country have the right to vote, which led to the war.

When the war turned against them, he fled to Europe with the national treasury. He's the guy they glorify by naming the gold coin after him.

You want to know why the dog paddle style of swimming is used. When swimming across rivers in Africa, don't splash! There are crocodiles.

Toss in a native witch with a pet leopard that pushes for a war against the white men and a bloody conflict. Sebastian's older brother, Nathan, who is a missionary and visits his brother to condemn him for living in sin with his older brother's wife. 

Tinus is a Boer and though he marries an English woman and lives in Rhodesia, he's a from a family line of Boers. He fights against the British. 

Sebastian sits it out and is condemned as a coward, but he's out in the boonies, it doesn't matter to him.

Echos of the Past ends with Tinus being caught, tried and hung as a traitor, not as a prisoner of war, who would be shot.

He led a raid on the British headquarters, took the British general captive, stripped all the officers down to their underwear and sent them packing.

The British general was not amused.

Elephant Walk deals with Sebastian's son Harry, who is at Oxford when he learns his father, Sebastian, was killed by a rogue elephant and has to return to Africa, this is set in the early 1900's leading up to WWI.

The writing is informative, and I love all the varied characters in Africa and England. 

These books are going to keep me busy for some time.

WC 062922 An Event

 

Today is an event in my life no one would believe.

Okay here goes. This is way back in 1995, Bruce King was governor of NM. I was teaching and sponsor of YMCA's Youth and Government program. Students had their choice in the fall semester to either write a bill or they could be in the newspaper and have to write an article. We met on Tuesdays after school and went over their bill or bills. They were allowed one joke bill, but they had to have a serious one too. I had previous bill books and newspapers for them to use as examples.

The legislative session starts in mid-January and lasts thirty days on odd years and 60 days on even years. In February I took my students during the day on a bus up to Santa Fe with other students from the high schools in Albuquerque, for what we called pre-ledge. In the morning the students could attend the regular committee meetings to get a feel for what they would be doing when our time came. They were on their own for lunch and then we held sessions in another government building with a lecture hall. Here all the sponsors from all over the state got to know one another, same for the students, the student governor, vice-governor, secretary of state, attorney general, elected the previous year, would lead the legislative session going over the procedures and decorum for our sessions. The editor of the newspaper and the sponsor of the newspaper would meet with the new reporters and go over their articles.

After the real legislature finished, a week later on Saturday, Sunday and Monday is when we held our model legislature in the Round House, using the committee rooms and chambers.

Some students thought being on the newspaper was the easy way, here they were informed that after dinner during the session when all the legislators were having free time, they were writing their articles and then having to lay them out on the computers and get them ready to be printed first thing in the morning. They were lucky to get to bed by 3 in the morning, then had to witness the committee hearings and general sessions the next day to write their next article. I digress.

That year, 1995, a senator from Rio Rancho had a school voucher bill. The year before it passed the committees but died without a hearing on the floor. He thought this year it would sail through as the committees had the same senators and votes.

Sponsors kept an eye on the students, but they were on their own to choose which committees or sessions. They just had to stay in the capital building. At this time, I always wore a suit with bolo tie, cowboy boots and George Strait cowboy hat. I was not hard to miss.

I was sitting in an area outside the committee rooms. Senator Benevides, a high-ranking member of the senate and was always on TV making comments, he was hard to miss as he wore a patch over one eye, he came up to me and said, "You might want to sit in on the Senate educational committee, it just started." 

Why he did this I haven't a clue. We'd never met before. I went in and they were reading the school voucher bill, The RR senator went to another committee meeting thinking he had this one in the bag.

Going over the bill it stipulated that a student could use the voucher to attend any school of his choosing if there was room at the school. The president of the AFT-NM stood and said this violated church and state as students could use public money for church schools. The archbishop of Santa Fe spoke in favor as it would give all students a choice of schools.

I saw the flaw in the bill, so I stood and said, "This bill would open up for coaches to start recruiting from other schools to get a monopoly on the good talent.

One of the senators looked at me, nodded his head, and said, "I hadn't thought of that."

When they voted the bill was tabled.

Needless to say, the senator from RR was rather miffed. 

The next year Gary Johnson was elected governor. He ran on the platform of allowing gambling on Indian land. He was as anti-public education as they come and for eight years, he had a voucher bill that never passed. NM still does not have a voucher law.