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Camilla Ray (Farley)

Catapult

Karen Kluender (Sewell)

 Hello, Everyone,

First of all, Mark, thank you for administering and encouraging this forum.  Even though I have not responded previously,  I have enjoyed reading each entry. It is wonderful seeing your names and faces and learning what is going on in your lives!

Introducing some new topics is good. I enjoy sports, but not to the extent and with the encyclopedic knowledge shown by many.  Reading is another matter.  I have always enjoyed reading, but with travel off the table there is more time available. Like Tom Marquardt, I have recently been drawn to books set in the time period of WWII.  I went through a phase of Tom Clancy and Clancy-ish stories, but the testosterone got a bit thick! Then I moved on to mysteries and eventually WWII.  The first, with a bizarre title, was recommended by a close friend.  The title? The Tattooist of Auschwitz, by Heather Morris, based on a true story.   

We have all been without controversy for several days now, so let's start something.  Opinions are important.  So, what is it? E-reader (Kindle, Nook, etc) or BOOK? I believe there are gently held feelings on both sides.  What are yours?  I'll save mine for the next round.

Here in coastal South Carolina it is a beautiful sunny 60 degree day.  My husband and I are getting together with a few friends for a Mardi Gras party a little later. We live in a small community and have all been quite careful during this time.  It will be masks (and masks), beads, coins and small flags in a private dining room.  

Karen Kluender Sewell

Don Comfort

We do a lot of reading especially at bedtime. Since hardbacked books take a lot of shelf space and I do not like to get rid of them, we have turned to Kindle.  It is convenient, less bulky on trips, and the reading material is much cheaper.  My Kindle library includes:

1. The Heart of Everything. The untold story of Red Cloud and the Indian Wars.

2. Slaughter at Golid.  The fight for Texas independence.

3. The Alamo Avengers. More on the fight for Texas Independence.

4. The Pioneers. First hand account of the westward movement.

5. The Apache Wars. The Indian Wars.

6. Leadership in Turbulent Times.  Abraham Lincoln's Presidency.

7. Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln's Presidency.

8. The Lincoln Conspiracy. The assasination of Lincoln.

9. The Bully Pulpit. Theodore Roosevelt's Presidency.

10.. Presidents of War. Several presidents handling of major wars.

11. The Hope of Glory. Reflections on Jesus' last words.

There are so many more.

On another note, Patti and I celebrated our third anniversary this past weekend at Lake Geneva.  Great restraurants, beautiful scenery, ice and snow sculptures, and most importantly all with social distancing.  We also played a lot of Mexican Train Dominoes which we are addicted to.

Thomas L. Bakos

Mark:

The thing at the road end of our driveway is a big post in the ground with a smaller piece pretending to hold the post up.  It also provides a place to hang an address sign.  It is not a catapult although, apparently, it gives a very good impression of being one.  It's been there for, at least, 15 years.  The wood tree trunks were from our property.  This is a close up of the sign.  

Thomas L. Bakos

Mark:

As for a picture, perhaps this might work for me if I wanted to look young and Klingon.  It also fits well with my return to Science Fiction.

This is a characture done by a characturist working off a younger me picture. 

Mary Lou Schmidt (Brunner)

Hi all.

This has certainly been a very different year. We have been enjoying the Winters down on the Gulf Coast of AL since 2014. However this year things are not the same. Our group of friends has dwindled because of illness and death. The area was also severly damaged by Sally and they are still trying to rebuild. The condo we had been renting is still not up and running, but luckily last winter we had decided to move to a different one, which did not suffer from Sally. All the Mardi Gras celebrations were cancelled, so no parades or beads. This year has been unseasonably cold and rainy but we have managed to walk the beach and trails when the weather permitted. Eating out has been limited to a couple lunches when we could eat outside. The locals are for the most part not masking up, so we are pretty much staying in the condo. All the Senior activities have been cancelled, so no cards or trips. We really miss seeing our Euchre playing friends.

We prefer books to the digital form and the library is our source of reading material.  Our list includes James Patterson, Sandra Brown and Sara Paretsky to name a few. For those of you not familiar with Sara, her main character is a PI who lives in Chicago and was raised on the South side. 

Hope everyone stays safe, warm and healthy.

Mary Lou

Thomas L. Bakos

By the way, if you walk up the driveway, this is the view you would get of the San Juan mountains to the south.  This looking out over a valley towards the mountaiins about 20 miles away.  The tallest is Mt. Sneffles - about 14,000 feet.  

We have not been too affected by any lock down orders.  We would tend to have ignored them anyway but really had no need to.  There are not a whole lot of other people around here.  

Restaurants have been open with slightly limited capacity in our part of Colorado for some time now.  What more do we need - a good book, a place to eat, and a view.

I hope by early spring, we'll have the Power Wagon.  It will look something like this.

It's been under restoration for about a year now in Idaho - just across the state line from Jackson Hole.  

Ethel (Jean) Snyder (Riskus)

I have always loved to read.  It's like taking a mini vacation.  I own a Nook, and I have Kindle on my computer for books I can't find on Nook.  If I had hard copies of all the books on Nook and Kindle I would have to build another room to fit them all.  My favorite author is Ann McCafferty.  I've read all her books more than once.  Next to Ann McCafferty is Simon Haynes.  As you can tell, I prefer fiction.  I believe Timothy Zahn went to Glenbard East.  I haven't read any of his books but plan on checking them out.

Thomas L. Bakos

Hey Jean:

Yes, checked Wikipedia, Timothy Zahn a Glenbard East graduate and a SciFi writer  Can't get much better than that.  Thanks for pointing it out.  I've still got 5 1/2 books in The Expanse series to get to the end of but that might be a next.

Gladys Christine Hallbeck (Hart)

Thanks, Karen. Just finished The Tattooist. I don't know how people survived! I've read a few others re WWII. Try Night by Elie Wiesel, a first person account of life in the concentration camp. And, one that made me cry, We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter. Defectors by Joseph Kanon and The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. In between, I read anything by Nelson DeMille, Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling!), and the Bosch books by Michael Connelly. Have also read all the Lee Child/Jack Reacher books. I do all my reading on the iPad through an app called Overdrive that connects to the Helen Plum Library. So, no books stacking up here!

William Gibson Heller

Thanks for mentioning Overdrive, Gladdie, I had never heard of it.  Will have to see if my library participates in it.

Karen Kluender (Sewell)

Gladys, Glad you found the book interesting.  I agree with a fascination about survival in umimaginable conditions.  I have read many non-fiction aocounts like Into Thin Air about climbing Everest, Knock Down about a tragic off shore sailing race, Dead Wake, about the sinking of the Lusitania,  Unbroken, Japanese prisoner of war camp, and many more.  All have caused me to consider whether I would ever have the strength and determination to keep going.  I guess that is the type of question we hope never to have to answer!  By the way, there are a couple of books by Susan Goodring centered in Europe and taking place during WWII and the 2000s. I particularly enjoyed My Name is Eve.  The author does a great job of weaving the characters and events of the wartime years with people and events more than 50 years later.

Is anyone one else watching "Resident Alien" on SyFy?  I am hooked. 

I realize there is a new "status symbol"...Have you had both shots?! It has become a weird topic among friends here.  It is also a way to find out who is a lot younger than you are!

Karen Kluender  (Sewell)

Karen Kluender (Sewell)

OOPS! If anyone is interested in reading the book I alluded to above, try looking for the correct author, Suzanne Goldring whose book is actually "My Name is Eva"!  Other than that you should have no problem!

Dale Hahne

Jim Iversen passed away this past Thursday at his home in Lombard.  I sent an "IN MEMORY" note to Mark but he hasn't distributed it yet.  Thought some of of you may want to know visitation info for today.  It's posted on the Brust Funeral Home site.

Don Comfort

Dale...thank you so much for this information, and thank you Mark for passing it along.  Jim and I were good friends from Pleasant Lane Elementary School, Lombard Junior High, and Glenbard East.  We were always mischievious and laughed a lot.  When I moved to California right after graduation from G.E. I lost track of Jim, but never forgot him and the great times we shared.  I will always remember him for the great fun we shared.

Don Comfort

Don Comfort

I concur Bruce!

Kerrin Anne Kinsey (Sgourakis)

Absolutely.  Never forget their sacrifice for our freedom. 

Mark Wieting

I've been reading the comics for a long time. There are old favorites like "Blondie" and newer ones that also hit home like "Zits," and, especially, "Pickles." Then there are ones I often simply don't get, notably "Frazz." The often sick but often funny "Wumo" counterbalances the tamer and equally funny "Sherman's Lagoon." Nothing wrong with a shark being a shark and occasionally eating a "hairy beach ape" like you or me.

So what's the point of this entry? A recent series in the comic strip "For Better or Worse" hit home. Mike, who's been yearning for his 16th birthday so he can finally get his driver's license, finally makes 16 and, having taken driver's ed and possessing the supreme confidence that ignorance can bring, heads off to the DMV to take his road test already knowing he'll come back with his license. His examiner has a fixed sneer on his face and is not about to make it easy on Mike. Worse, Mike's girlfriend just that morning has told him she's smitten with another guy and they are done. Thoughts of her creep into his mind as he tries to parallel park and perform other parts of the test. He fails. He's reluctant to go home and admit that he's failed. How is he going to tell his dad that he failed when he gets home from work? How embarrassing! He'd been so confident!

Next scene: dad returns home from work and says, "How'd it go today? You know, I failed my first time!" Like Alka-Seltzer at the right time, oh what a relief it is for Mike to hear that.

When we were 16, I remember some discussion about the best place to take your test and I believe the two choices were Lombard [on Westmore, where the DMV is now??] or Itasca, and the consensus was that Itasca was "easier."

Itasca, June 1961: I fail the first time, too. The common wisdom in those days was that the examiners were harder on the boys, failing almost all of them, while passing most of the girls, who being more sensible than 16-year-old boys, were much less likely to speed or "lay patches." Or drag race [Morgan are you listening?].  So a failure on first try was not complete ignominy.

July 1961: the stakes are higher because if I fail a second time, my entire life will be riding on the third try. Fail that and my life would essentially be over because I'd have to wait 6 MORE MONTHS for the fourth try. It would be 1962 by the time I could drive and I'd be the last in the class to be able to ask my parents to borrow the car.

I fail again. The key moment was when I was asked to pull to the side of the road and stop, to make sure I got entirely off the road and to test whether I would a activate my turn signal before I reentered the roadway. Problem: the shoulder of the road was gravel, and my mother's car was stick shift. Releasing the clutch at a fairly fast rate of speed, I spun the tires on the gravel shoulder. "Whoa, boy! You're not planting potatoes!" the examiner basically shouted at me. Done. Done. Done.

Later in July 1961, with much more practice behind the wheel, especially on gravel, I pass and I don't remember anything about that test except for the fact that I passed.

So I'm wondering, since almost all of you have passed your driver's test, what are your memories?

Mary Lou Schmidt (Brunner)

Hi Mark. I too went to Itasca for my test. I had 27 points against me-all for not making correct left turns.  If you had 30 points, you failed. I didn't make a sharp turn. The thing I most remember tho was when the examiner told me that somewhere during the test he was going to tell me to suddenly stop and I should stop no, matter wher we were. I was driving down the street and he suddenly said "stop". I slammed on the brakes so hard that he almost hit the windshield and all his paperwork fell on the floor.  He was very surprised and said I had good reflexes.

Thomas L. Bakos

I have absolutely no recollection of my driving test or how many times it may have taken.  Our son's story is pretty good though.  He got his license (in NY) and was coming home from a date shortly thereafter.  He got caught in a speed trap (I'm speculating).and got a speding ticket. As a result, in NY, his licenses as a new driver was suspended for six months.  He claimed he was driving an unfamiliar car.  I said any car he would be driving would have been unfamiliar.  That's why they put speedometers in them. 

In six months he was driving a little wiser. 

But as for cartoons.  I saved this one.

Those were the days - we thought, perhaps, nothing could change and it turned out anything could.

Kerrin Anne Kinsey (Sgourakis)

I came to G.E. in my Junior year from VA.  We could get a license there at 15 (in the olden days), but I didn't have anyone to teach me.  When I got to G.E. I was too young to sign up and in my Sr. year, couldn't.  So, to make a long story short, I didn't bother.  Just used public transportation ... especially the train.  Finally, got my license when I was 23.  Took lessons from a Driving School.  3 lessons and I got my license on the first try.

Don Comfort

I passed on my first attempt, but when I landed in California, I failed for not turning left in a left turn lane. I guess rules were different then.

Bruce F. Burianek

I took 2 tries in Ill only one in Calif. and once for my international one in the Phillippines.

William Gibson Heller

Funny that this topic should come up.  Last Friday at my favorite coffee shop a former neighbor came in and we fell to talking.  His daughter just finished her freshman year in college (sorry to offend, some colleges have declared names like freshman, junior, etc. to be discriminatory or white power related or something).  Anyway, we reflected on what a liberating and fantastic experience it was for us to gain a drivers license.  I told him about the Itaska preference for Lombard kids.  He noted it is the same now for Marion kids....Hartford City being the site of choice.  What is different now vs.then is the degree of ambition for getting that license. It just ain't a big deal now.  The kids are completely accustomed to being driven by parents everywhere...to/from school, to sporting events, etc.  The kids have come to see parents as Uber drivers (no Ubers in Marion, however) available at their beck and call and allowing them to listen to their phone music or play games while being pampered.  Thus there is no urgency to gain transportation freedom. 

Schools no longer offer driver's ed as we had available, it is a private marketplace now though many teachers still  do it during the summers.  I recall Harry Ryan as my instructor, maybe most of you had him too.  He must have taught me well as I passed on first try, in Itaska. After a 4 year renewal in October, the next time will require a test again!

Bruce F. Burianek

When I renewed my Washington Lic last time I had to go to the DMV just so they could give me a eye exam.  The two times before that I renewed on line.