What's Happenin' Now?

Time to get back to this after another break. Where do I start? How about with the fact that some crazy things are going on with the weather, which is normal for this time of the year. There used to be an old commercial with the famous line, "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature!". Well, someone must have irritated her, because she has really been trying to drive us crazy with extreme changes. We had a big snowstorm two weeks ago which produced a beautiful scene. A fresh snow makes everything look clean, pristine and beautiful. If Mother Nature left it that way we could all enjoy it, but just twenty four hours later the temperature was in the high fifties and the snow melted into ugly slush. Last Tuesday, the temp was almost seventy, so down to the lake I went (no joy), and then the weather went into a nosedive. Last night we had about an inch of snow and today the high will be about thirty degrees; tomorrow it will be forty and by Wednesday and Thursday we're looking at temps close to seventy again. Who knows?

Last time I asked if anyone knew who Cassandra Peterson was. Well my friends Terry Tusa and Skip Dudley came up with the correct answer. When Cassandra puts on her black beehive wig, black makeup, black dress and black fishnet stockings, she becomes Elvira, Mistress Of The Dark. I love that lady. She's my type of woman. Of course, at my age, I might not survive the experience.

Here's a guessing game for us older types. One of the most successful singers of the late forties, the fifties and the sixties was born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio. After he had his first number one hit, many others followed. He first sang publicly in 1930 and he passed on in 2007. With that info, I expect to get several correct answers.

I was fishing at the dam spillway recently when an Alma resident named Ron McConnell hooked into a terrific flathead catfish. He fought it for half an hour and when he finally got it near him, my fishing partner and neighbor, Steve Padgett, netted it for him. Ron took it to the closest bait shop to get it weighed, but their scale only goes to fifty pounds and Ron's fish passed that easily. He put it back in a tank to get it refreshed, then took to Fishermen's Corner here in Alma, where it topped out at 57 pounds. He later released it into the lake where it could enjoy its life in more swimming area than the spillway offers. That's his son with him as they stand outside the Fishermen's Corner. When he was really struggling to get the fish in, I asked him at one point, "What's he doing to you?" Ron answered, "Whatever he wants." There are some big, big fish in Harlan County Lake. My friend Steve last summer nailed a twenty pound striped bass, and another "Almanite" hauled in a fifteen pound northern pike. I'll have my turn.

A national "institution" has gone under. The Rocky Mountain News, which published a daily paper for 150 years, has closed its doors. Add one part of the terrible economy which has prompted many people to save money by cancelling their daily paper, add one part the trend toward more and more people getting their news from television and add another part which is people like me who get 90% percent of their news from the internet, and you have the perfect formula for newspaper business failure. Every daily newspaper in the country is feeling the effects of disappearing revenue, so we can expect to see more old time "dailies" cease publication. Time and technology constantly change the way we live and it could be that what seems like the the genuine American ritual of sitting down with a cup of coffee and leisurely reading the morning paper will go the way of those who made buggy whips and covered wagons.

I've also read of more and more people in these troubled times who are saving money by canceling their cable and satellite TV subscriptions and then using the internet to see their favorite shows. I think I mentioned in an earlier post that more and more TV favorites are available on-line the day after they play on TV. Another benefit of this arrangement is that a person can watch those shows at a time most convenient to him or her, not at a time dictated by a network.

In reading the on-line "paper" this morning, I couldn't believe my eyes when I read that a "gentleman" in Lexington, NE. had been arrested for driving on a suspended license. What made it interesting is that since 2002 this is the eighteenth time he has been stopped for driving on a suspended license. What? Obviously, he doesn't care whether it's suspended or not, he's going to drive whenever he feels like it. He posted $500.00 of the $5,000.00 bail and went home. Hmm, I wonder if he drove. I also wonder why the powers that be haven't put this yo-yo in one of the state's special hotels for people like him. Those centers are called jails, and I think he needs to go there and be kept in isolation for enough time to make him think twice about driving without a license. Eighteen times in seven years? I've been driving since 1950 and I haven't been stopped eighteen times. How can one person drive badly enough to attract an officer's eye that many times in that short a period of time? It's easy to see why his license was suspended in the first place.

I also had to scratch my head when I read of the guy in Tennessee who was arrested after buying some meth from an undercover police officer. As soon as the money passed from the buyer to the cop, the handcuffs were on and the arrest was made. But was it a legal purchase? After all, the money he bought it with turned out to be counterfeit. Somewhere, some "technicality" loving defense lawyer is rubbing his hands with glee. In the meantime, the "perp" now has to face charges from the federal government in addition to the local authorities. It seems the Treasury Department takes a dim view of those who print their own money, other than themselves, that is.

That little story reminds me that every owner of a color laser printer may not know that the manufacturer and serial number of the printer is printed on every copy they make with the machine. It takes a special light to make the information visible, but since those machines can make copies of money that will fool many people, the government requires that every printed page bear information that will allow the feds to track down the owner of the printer.

The same is true of CD and DVD burners in our computers. Each burner has a serial number, and when it burns a disk, whether it be CD or DVD, it burns the manufacturer's name and the serial number of the burner onto each disk. If the Recording Industry Association of American (RIAA) or the Motion Picture Association (MPA) finds an illegal copy of music or a video, it can track down the obviously dangerous criminal who made the copy and threatens the very
fabric of truth, justice and the American way of life. Please, somebody give me a break here.
Both of those organizations have spent huge amounts of money suing people who make single downloads, when that money could have been much better spent going after the pirates who make thousands of illegal copies. I read one story where the motion picture people were suing an elderly man whose grandson had visited and, unknown to his grandfather, had illegally downloaded a movie. The last I read, they were prepared to take his house to satisfy their demands. Makes me want to quit watching movies.

The Hammer Falls

Wow - after all the talk about the mild winter, Mother Nature is sending us a heavy hit. The storm that drenched southern California a few days ago will arrive in Nebraska about midnight tonight. To make matters more interesting, a cold air mass moving down from Canada will cover the state at about the same time. That means heavy snow and high winds; almost blizzard conditions all day tomorrow. I'm going to take some before and after pictures from my doorway and post them tomorrow. I have to make a run to the market before 6:00 PM (that's when it closes on weekdays, 3:00PM on Sundays) because I am out of the little marshmallows, and tomorrow will definitely be a hot chocolate type of day, and a person absolutely has to have the little marshmallows with hot chocolate. Right?

OK. Who is Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg? Why, she is everybody's favorite - Jane Seymour. She is just a tiny lady and she had quite a physical time carrying and delivering twins a while back, so much of her life these days is dedicated to those new humans. She has her priorities straight.

For the next mystery celebrity, I've picked someone a little off the wall: Cassandra Peterson. She's an actress who has never appeared in a notable film or play. She's known for a single character who appears nationally about once a year these days. I'm in love with that character and I wish she were real. How could a man not like a character who (in one of her really bad movies) is arrested, placed in a jail cell, and then declares, "I know my rights. I'm entitled to a telephone call and a strip search!" Her character went from a single Los Angeles TV station personality to nationwide fame and spawned a video game, custom make-up for women, and a special Universal Studios, Florida, attraction. Here's her picture. Who's her character?

The rural areas of Nebraska took a hit last week when the largest paper in the state, the Omaha World Herald, discontinued delivery to the western half of Nebraska. The economy is not good and Newspapers everywhere have seen their circulation numbers plummet. The World Herald said it simply costs more to deliver the papers to that part of the state than it is making in subscriptions. Omaha, of course, sits on the Missouri river in the easternmost part of Nebraska, and to have trucks drive 200 to 350 miles each way to make deliveries to distribution centers is simply no longer affordable.

The economy hurts, but internet news hurts papers all over the nation, if not the world, and was doing so long before the economy went south. Several years ago, while still living in the L.A. area, I discontinued home delivery of the Times and started reading it on-line. Now, I still read it on-line as well as the Omaha World Herald and the Kearney Hub. Advertising works on the internet, so some money is being made there. Does it produce more profit than printed editions? I don't know, but the internet is slowly but surely taking over news dissemination world wide. That can create problems.

Nothing requires a news website to be impartial or non-partisan. Like Newspapers, many websites are created because someone has a news slant to present. It behooves the careful person to check various news sources on important stories. In addition to the newpapers mentioned above, I read the BBC news world headlines, a site called Journalism In The Public Interest, and two specialty news sites: Politifact.com and Factcheck.org. The latter two sites are in the business of checking the accuracy of what our politicians and political pundits are saying. Both sites are non-partisan, and after spending years debunking many of the Bush administration statements , they are now doing the same for the Obama regime. They play no favorites. I believe that if I read only the news sources I know will agree with and support my outlook on life and politics, I am not going to learn anything new. I read news sources from the left and from the right. As a result, I am registered as a non-partisan voter because I find that both the Republican and Democratic parties tend to irritate me no end.

If they would just let me run things, everything would be fine. Right?

It Might As Well Be Spring

Another shirtsleeves week weather-wise, and spring is on its way regardless of what that groundhog in Pennsylvania says.

First, let's clear up the answer to last week's celebrity name question. Who was Emmanuel Goldenberg? He was the great actor Edward G. Robinson. I think offering the fact that he was born in Bucharest, Romania sent some of the readers down the wrong path and I got a couple of comments that it was probably Peter Lorre. My Friend Erika was the only one who pegged Robinson as the correct actor. Before he passed away, I remember reading an interview in which he stated that had he known he would gain such fame and sign so many autographs, he would have selected something like John Doe for his screen name. He got very tired of writing out such a long name. His last film was Soylent Green in 1973, co-starring Charlton Heston. In that film Heston is seen crying as Robinson's character is dying. The tears were real; Heston was the only person on the set who knew that Edward G. Robinson had terminal cancer and had but weeks to live.

This week's guessing game should get at least two or three correct answers. Who is Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg? A great actress on the big screen as well as TV, she appears less frequently now because her primary role is that of wife and mother. She had her own hit series on TV for five years.

Today, the sky was at times filled with tens of thousands of geese flying north. It is a spectacular sight and is seen every year, but much earlier than usual this year. It's amazing how they make those "V" shaped formations and keep trading off the lead when the bird at the head of the formation needs a break. They are literally everywhere.

I'll be on the phone in the morning calling the Rowe Audubon Sanctuary to make a reservation to be in one of the blinds on the Platte River to watch the Sandhill Cranes next month. It's hard to imagine, but there will be approximately 600,000 cranes in one fifty mile stretch of the river. The state spends a lot of time and money tilling the ground along the Platte to keep it vegetation free. The cranes will not land in an area covered with weeds and tall growth, which is abundant on both sides of the river in many areas. Most of the grasses and weeds are not native to America, but they surely love to grow here. It is a never ending battle to keep invasive plants out of the areas along the Platte used for roosting by the cranes. Also, all those plants suck up a lot of water, reducing the flow of the Platte, which is a broad, shallow waterway. It's the famous river noted as, "Too thin to plow - Too thick to drink", but without its existence, the migration to the west in the old days would have been much, much different. The Platte and Nebraska played a huge role in the opening of the west. The cranes stopped here even then. I wonder what those old pioneers thought when they saw them. Probably thought it was dinner time.

We had our first rain in a while two days ago. It was light but was accompanied by a lot of wind, and I can't get over how different the wind sounds here in Nebraska as opposed to southern California. The wind here has a deeper more "threatening" sound to it, perhaps because it comes down from Canada and has no hills or mountains to break it up or change its course. The wind in L.A. comes to town after passing through the mountains and hills that surround the city, and it sounds fundamentally different. If the California wind is a tenor, the Nebraska wind is a basso.

Went fishing last week and caught myself a couple of nice catfish of about five to seven pounds. They are currently known as fillets in my freezer. I also caught a carp about 12-15 pounds and I snagged a gar that was about seven or eight pounds. Both the carp and gar wound up on the shore to serve as raccoon food. Who would believe it's warm enough to go fishing in Nebraska in February? And I don't mean ice fishing - all I needed was a light jacket as temps were in the middle fifties.

I have two trips to Kearney coming up this week, Wednesday and Friday, helping friends who don't drive make it to medical appointments. It's a long drive, but it gives me a chance to visit Burger King, Wendy's or Hunan's for a Chinese buffet.

A Bunch Of Things

Just got back from a two mile walk on the trail by the lake, and my legs are feeling the lack of exercise that generally goes with winter out here. Remember, my walks are not leisurely strolls - I step it out at pretty good pace. Of course, I started the day with some walking this morning in the city auditorium/basketball arena. Twenty-six times around the interior of the building equals one mile, but it's just not the same as walking the trail and watching for squirrels or deer, or scanning the lake (which is not frozen in the center) and watching a bald eagle try a stealthy swoop to grab one of the ducks still hanging around here. Last winter, the fish and game people counted sixty one bald eagles in and around the lake. A lot of them leave in the summer, but in the winter, there are other birds and fish to be had at Harlan County Lake.

A fella named Don Jardon volunteers to open the city auditorium every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from December 15 to March 15 and set it up for those who wish to exercise by walking in circles. A week ago Monday, 46 people showed up between 7:00 AM and 12:00 noon, a new record for a single day. Don tries to break up the boredom by setting up his boom box and playing his collection of old hits. He has almost every genre, from big bands of the forties and fifties to country western hits of recent vintage. Don is a retired school teacher who returned to Alma a few years ago after spending more than a dozen years in Japan teaching at a school on a U.S. Air Force base. He is an interesting guy to listen to.

In the center of what would be the basketball court, a bunch of rolled up pads are stored. These are rolled out in the afternoons for gymnastic practice by the team from Alma High. The kids come down from the school after the noon hour because the auditorium/basketball court at school is used by the boys and girl's basketball teams.

Oh Yeah, last post I asked if anyone knew the identity of Caryn Elaine Johnson. I didn't receive any emails with guesses, so I have to assume that none of my readers know that this is the true identity of View host Whoopee Goldberg. That's not the first time someone has taken a good looking name like Caryn Elaine and turned it into something else. A singer named Jerry Dorsey couldn't get a hit record until his agent changed his name to Engelbert Humperdink, and we all know his history. Let's see who can identify Emmanuel Goldenberg. Born in Bucharest, Romania, he was a great actor who appeared in over 100 films starting in 1916 and ending with his last film in 1973. He never won an Oscar for a specific performance, but he was awarded a lifetime achievement Oscar before he passed away. Remember, you can give your answer by
clicking on the comments link at the end of today's post. It will send me an immediate email.

Tomorrow I travel north to Kearney to get a couple of things unavailable down here in Alma and I intend to visit a computer store recommended to me by a fellow computer junkie I met in Orleans, NE. While in Kearney, I may make a side trip to a branch of Cabela's to check out some fishing gear I can feel calling my name. I am not really obsessive compulsive about fishing. Well, most of the time I'm not. Ok, maybe just a little more than most people. To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't sell my kids into white slavery for the right fishing boat, but it would be a close call.

On Thursday, I'll be running up to Kearney again to pick up my daughter Valerie, who is returning from a visit to Dallas to be with her youngest, who is my twenty-one year old grandson Vani. His full name is Giovani Jean Christopher Giunca, and his father (my daughter's ex) was born in Romania. I had always thought that the Romanian language and culture was basically Slavic, but it actually evolves from Latin and is thought to be the first of the "romance" languages to split off from Latin. I guess because Romania was behind the "iron curtain" imposed by Russia, I tended to view Romania as a Slavic nation. Not so. To be certain, there are Slavic influences and some Slavic people there, but the history of the country evolves from the Roman occupation before the fall of Rome.

In between trips to the north, I intend to take advantage of good weather and spend a good portion of Wednesday fishing at the spillway. The weather is forecast to be almost sixty degrees, which is, to me, amazing for this time of the year in Nebraska. In fact, through Saturday it will be spring like. One of the natives remarked to me that she could remember twenty years ago when the temperature hit twenty below and stayed there for two weeks. We certainly have not experienced anything close to that in the two winters I've been here. Of course, winter ain't done yet. Not by a long shot. So, stay tuned, folks, because you just never know what Mother Nature might do around here.

What A Gorgeous Day

This day is too beautiful to believe for a day in January. Temperature is just shy of 70 degrees, the sky is a brilliant blue, and you can see for a hundred miles, it seems. I spent an hour or so washing the car at the local do-it-yourself car wash and removed a lot of salt from last weeks drive in the snow and slush in Lincoln. It's important here to get that stuff off quickly because it can really ruin a car's body. Most of us from out west know how many cars we have spotted over the years that came from the east and had rusted out areas on the rocker panels below the doors and on the fenders.

I have opened almost all the windows in my place and I'm letting fresh air blow through. It's glorious. I see from news reports that people in Kentucky, which is not that far away, are suffering with cold and an ice storm. Don't know why, but it's sure different here.

The lake is still iced up around the shoreline, but in the spillway below the dam, the ice is gone and people are catching fish. Three days ago a fella took a 60 pound flathead catfish out of the spillway area.

This is a picture of the spillway taken last fall, and it contains a "mini lake", as you can see. From here the water flows out and forms the Lower Republican River, which meanders through Nebraska and into Kansas. The state of Kansas monitors how much water is in the river, complains mightily that Nebraska is keeping too much water in the lake and then files another lawsuit. At least that seems to be the procedure to this relative newcomer to the area.


This is a photo of my fishing buddy, Steve Padgett, and a 5 or 6 pound wiper (a cross between a white bass and a striped bass) that he caught last fall. There are a lot of fish in that little lake at the bottom of the spillways and some of them are really, really big. Twenty pound stripers have also been caught here.

Nebraska permits each angler to have two poles in the water at a time, so the procedure is to cast a heavy rig out with cut bait or night crawlers dipped in stinko stuff, and while it's sitting on the bottom waiting for a large customer, use a lighter pole and line to throw and retrieve lures and hope to nail a largemouth bass, walleye, white bass, or northern pike. There's a lot here for people who love to fish and hunt.

Okay, last time, I asked if anybody knew the screen name of Alexandra Cymboliak Gluck, and this time nobody came up with it. That makes me feel really sinister. It was the real name of America's sweetheart in the fifties and sixties, Sandra Dee. On screen she was Gidget, and off screen she was Mrs. Bobby Darrin. She left us way, way too early.

So, let's see how many of us can identify the screen name for Caryn Elaine Johnson, a current star of movies and TV. She has given us a lot laughs as well as drama. She has won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and a Tony award.

In my post about the visit to Concordia University, I hope nobody got the impression that it is a somber, no fun school. Far from the truth. The kids I saw walking here and there had a lot of smiles and laughter going on, and so did much of the staff. The storm that hit the area really came during the lunch hour, and I was enjoying lunch (courtesy of the school) with my four companions when we heard gales of laughter from one side of the cafeteria. There is a large floor to ceiling window there and a direct view to a slightly downhill walkway past the bicycle rack just outside. At one point, the walkway acquired a coating of ice and unsuspecting pedestrians were suddenly skidding along trying not to fall flat. Several did go down, but nobody went down hard enough to get hurt. Every time somebody wound up sliding along and trying physical gyrations to regain balance, the group in the cafeteria would whoop it up. Eventually the crowd at the window grew to about twenty five, and they moaned mightily when a maintenance guy showed up and sprinkled "ice melt" on the offending area of the walkway. I still believe it is a great place for a young person to get an education.

Visits to schools like that help remind me that the vast majority of our young people are responsible, have solid character, and in due time will take their turn at trying to lead our country. It's easy to forget that concept if we read the papers, watch TV see nothing except the bad news about younger people arrested and sent to prison for offenses mostly connected to drugs and violence. Those troubled kids do not represent the kids of mainstream America, and neither do the antics of the idiotic entertainment figures of the young. The soap opera lives of Paris, Brittany, Lindsay, et al, are not representative of the type of lives led by most of our young people. Just because kids may like the music of those celebrities, does not mean that they endorse their life styles. When it comes to younger Americans, I believe that our cup is much, much more than half full. That may be a bit of a mixed metaphor, but it's how I see it.

Still A Lot Going On

A couple of posts ago, I said that Mother Nature would be dropping the winter hammer on us and she did.  For about a week we had high temps between 12 and 20 above and a couple of light snowfalls here.  Areas to the north and east, such as Omaha and Lincoln, really got pounded with cold and heavy snow, but again, we got off kind of light.  The cold is leaving town.  Today the high was about 39 and by Saturday it's supposed to be 55 to 60, and already the snow here is about gone.  

All indications are that we will have an early spring.  It is still January and daily we see flocks of waterfowl heading north.  Yup, north.  The wild critters know something our forecasters don't.  I've looked closely at some of the trees here, but I don't see any sign of new buds, which will be the ultimate signal that spring is at hand.  Of course, some of the worst blizzards in the history of  America occurred in March, so stay tuned for the latest.  With the weather, nothing is ever certain.

Okay, so Terri again knew who the mystery celebrity was.  Eugene Maurice Orowitz, of course, was the true name for Michael Landon, Bonanza's Little Joe.  Let's see how well she does with Alexandra Cymboliak Gluck.  Anybody who thinks he or she knows the screen name for this late actress is invited to post a comment at the end of the post.  It immediately sends me an email.

I mentioned in a previous post about an 11 year old boy whose mother came up from Georgia to drop him off under Nebraska's safe haven law as "uncontrollable".  I read that the boy, now 12, has been placed in Boys Town, based in Omaha.  If you haven't heard of Boys Town, you have missed a lot.  Go to Netflix and rent the movie with that name, or simply Google "Boys Town". The film starred Spencer Tracy as Father Flanagan, the founder, and Mickey Rooney, as a troubled youth who prospered under Flanagan's guidance.  Boys Town is still working miracles with young people on whom society had simply given up.  It's interesting to note that Spencer Tracy won a best acting Oscar for his performance as Father Flanagan.  After receiving his trophy, he made a special plate and had it installed on the award.   The plate inscription dedicated the statuette to Flanagan and congratulated him on his life's work.  He then sent the Oscar to the priest at Boys Town, where it remains on display to this day.  

If we were to have a theme here of "The good, the bad and the ugly", we'll make the Boys Town item "the good", and the following will be "the bad".

 The state troopers made another big drug bust on I-80 this past week and it is one of the biggest hauls in Nebraska history.  Police stopped a $200,000.00 motor home with California plates because the driver was cruising along the shoulder of the road.  Why?? Who knows.  The trooper thought something was wrong with the answers he was getting to some simple questions so he called for a car with a drug sniffing dog.  The dog signalled a drug find when he entered the vehicle.  Police pulled up the carpet on the floor in the rear and found a secret compartment with 236 pounds of cocaine in in 1 kilo bricks.  We are talking multi-millions of dollars here.  The driver, his wife and their 21 year old daughter are going to be in this state for a long, long time.  Why do these yo-yos do things that attract the officer's eye?  Who knows?  Of course, we only hear about the ones they caught.  I wonder how many get through without a sweat.  Hmmm.  Unpleasant thought.  

Ok, now for the ugly.  I send a lot of emails to my friends out in the internet world and a lot of them are forwards of mails I receive.  There are a lot of creepazoids out there who love to secretly raid the forwarded emails because they can see the addresses of the people it's been sent to.  They use that information to flood those addresses with spam or bogus offers for scams of all kinds.  I try to make sure that when I forward emails, I use the edit function to "select all", copy it to the notepad, open a new email and paste what I copy.  I then select and delete the portions at the top that contain the email addresses of previous recipients.  Now they are not subject to possible spam assaults as a result my forwarding it.  When I select those to whom I am sending it, I use the "bcc" function, which means "blind copy" and hides the names and email addresses of those to whom I send it.  My email client is Thunderbird, which to me is 500% superior to Outlook,which I refuse to use mainly because it is a Microsoft product (that's another story).  With Thunderbird, when I pick the name from the contact list, I right click and have to the "bcc" option.  It's very easy to do.  When my friends receive an email from me and it says, "recipents suppressed", it merely means that I have used bcc for all those to whom it was sent. Nobody with a program that tries to steal email addresses can use my friends as targets.    

Starting Problem

I've had so much going on the past few days that I'm not sure where to start.  I guess it makes sense to take care of unfinished business from my last posting, so if you don't know who Thomas Mapother IV is, I'll tell you that he is known as Tom Cruise.  I'd change it, too.  Our friend Terri in Hesperia knew the answer, so let's challenge her with the late Eugene Maurice Orowitz, a TV icon as an actor, director and producer.  Another celebrity great stolen from us far too soon by cancer.  Who has a clue?  No fair using Google.

Last Friday I drove my daughter, granddaughter and two of her friends 170 miles to Seward, Nebraska, to attend Concordia University's "Visit Day", which acquaints prospective students with the school.  My Granddaughter, Enchantra, has already been admitted, but her two friends, Ryanne and Brittany, were undecided about the school.  From my perspective, it was a dynamite visit and an impressive university.  It's small, only 1300 in the student body, but is well supported by endowments and scholarships, and I found the facilities and the classroom equipment to be first rate.  

Originally built to turn out Lutheran Ministers, the school now offers a wide selection of majors including art, which is my granddaughter's interest.  Concordia has a top notch reputation for its computer graphics schooling and their computers are top of the line Macs, so it's hard to go wrong.  The three girls were the only visitors that day looking at art as a major, so the director of the department took us on a personal tour of the art building and it left us with a deep appreciation for how the school does things.  

It's obvious that Concordia is not in the business of just cranking students through the process and taking their money.  This school spends a great deal of time with each and every student and never lets them forget that the purpose of the schooling is find employment in a career that they enjoy.   One of the university administrators made it clear that especially with freshmen, they expect every instructor to have personal and positive relationship with every student in their classes.  On the average, there are 14 students for every instructor, and in the freshman classes, all instructors carry a PhD.  I remember sitting in the auditorium at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, CA, with 500 other students for World History and again for Marine Biology.  No auditorium classes exist at Concordia.  

While TV and movies may glorify the "slacker" culture, being a slacker at Concordia will get the student a quick exit.  The antics of "Animal House" don't exist here, and any students who try to enact them will be out the door.  It was stressed by the administrators that character and integrity are expected from every student.  Impressive.  

Before we left, the area was hit by a major snow storm and driving back was not a lot of fun.  The girls all wanted to go shopping in Lincoln, which is a real city of 250,000 and about 24 miles from Seward.  My daughter Eva, having once lived in Seward, said "I know a shortcut to Lincoln".   I shouldn't have listened to her, because the drive was a harrowing experience.  The road simply disappeared beneath the falling snow and I had to follow the car in front of me hoping that he or she knew where to drive.  On this drive, I learned the real reason why the state puts noise producing grooves on the edges of roadways.  Happily, they also put them down the center stripe of the road we had taken, and if I got too far to the right or to the left, the noise let me know to correct my direction.  We got to Lincoln OK, and I spent a couple of hours in a Barnes and Noble store with coffee and a book while the girls "did their thing".  The drive back on I-80 was easier to a degree, as all the snow had been cleared, but there was a great deal of ice on the road, and of course it was dark.  I drove as carefully as I could, but was worn out with nervous exhaustion by the time we arrived home safe and sound.  

More about life in Nebraska tomorrow.

The Hammer Will Fall

The weather here continues to be marvelous, warm and un-January like.  The digital sign on the bank in downtown Alma today said the temperature at 3:00 PM was 71 degrees.  Now, I think that's a little higher than it really was, but it was at least 65 or thereabouts.  I'd like to know where the measuring device for the bank is located.  If the thermometer is in the sun it's going to give a higher reading than the true temperature.  We have one more day of this and then Mother Nature drops the hammer.  Friday, the high will be 31 degrees with clouds in the morning and rain then snow in the afternoon.  And so it will be through Tuesday, with each day promising snow.  We could really use the moisture.  By a week from today, though, things will start to warm up again.  

Okay, last post I asked  if anyone out there could identify the singer who changed her name from Mary Isabella Catherine Bernadette O'Brien.  That's a mouthful for a name and we all liked her better as Dusty Springfield, one of the all time greats.  I have had her "Dusty In Memphis" album for decades, first on LP and now on CD.  I also acquired an album that contained several songs she recorded in the 60s and 70s but which were not released until five years after her passing.  One of the best is her cover of Carol King's "You've Got A Friend".  Outstanding.  We lost her to breast cancer in 1999, and the world of music has been a little emptier ever since.  For next time, let's see how many of you can identify the actor who was born Thomas Mapother IV.  You can email me if you think you know it, or you can click on the "comments" link at the bottom of today's blog entry.

Nebraska has changed a law it passed that contained a glitch that caused the state to get nationwide notice.  Like most states, the legislature passed a "sanctuary" law intended to allow unwanted newborns to be taken to a hospital and dropped off, no questions asked, no names taken.  It is certainly better than finding dead newborns in dumpsters.  That was the intent of the law.  In writing it, however, the legislators neglected to put an age limit for the child involved and people begain dropping off unmanageable teenagers, saying, "OK, Nebraska, he/she is your problem now."  The writers of the law also neglected to limit its applicability to residents of this state, so one lady drove up from Atlanta, GA, and dropped off her 11 year old son who she said she simply could not handle any more.  All of this made national news and the law was recently corrected on both counts:  children involved must be residents of Nebraska and can be no more than 30 days old.    It has also brought to the state's attention the fact a great many parents are at their wits end when it comes to dealing with their kids, so the state government is holding conferences and hearings to try to develop solutions for the problem.  It is probably more than this state can solve.  It's a national issue with tons of contributing factors, but it's nice to know that the problem is being recognized as affecting everyone:  The more these kids wind up in the state systems, the more it costs everyone in every state, and the answers always start in the home.  

 

Good Weather and Guessing Game

The good weather we've enjoyed will hold for the next couple of days, but then the forecasters say we are in for cold and snow for four consecutive days.  It is winter, after all, so I can't complain too much.  I drove to one of my favorite fishing spots on the lake today to see if all the warm weather might have thawed the shore ice and allow some fishing, but no such luck.  Ah, me.  Such is life.

For many years, my great aunt was involved in the Hollywood scene and was wardrobe mistress to Lucille Ball during the greatest days of Desilu productions.  She did pretty good - she married the Desilu treasurer and they ran off in the sunset to Palm Springs.  Among other favors, she got me autographs of many of the movie celebrities.  My book had the signatures of stars such as Van Johnson (shows you how old I am), Cyd Charisse (When I was younger, I thought she was the sexiest woman alive), and Robert Taylor.   Aunt Dell, as she was known, also got me tickets to the filming of I Love Lucy, December Bride, and Our Miss Brooks.  The tickets were great because I was such a nerd in High School that going to the filmings was the only way I could get a date.  

A life long obsession started when my aunt told me that the actor Robert Taylor's real name was Spangler Arlington Brough.  No wonder he changed it.  Then I wondered what the real names of other stars were, and I have collected them ever since.  I'm not going to list them all here, but I'd like to pull one out of my database to see if any of my readers know who she is.  I'm speaking of Ilyena Vasilievna Mironov.  By what name do we all know her?  Hint: She has won an Oscar, three Golden Globes and four Emmys.  She's not from the past; She is one of the today's A-List actors. I'll reveal her name at the bottom of today's blog.

 Out here in the boonies, cable TV is a hit and miss proposition.  It costs a lot of money to string cable to a small town of just a few hundred people, and not a lot of companies are willing to do that for the meager income it will bring.  For that reason, Dish TV and Direct TV satellite dishes are everywhere.  I had Dish TV installed shortly after I moved here because it gives me a couple of neat benefits.  During the football season I subscribe to a sports package that gives me both southern California Fox Sports stations so that I can see the games of my beloved UCLA Bruins.  I watch them faithfully, even through miserable seasons like this last one.  Also, for 1.50 a month I opted to get KTLA, channel 5, Los Angeles, because it shows the Rose Parade uninterrupted.  Most stations here that show the parade tend to cut out the bands and horses, which I would like to see.  Before I moved here, KTLA was my source for morning news and sports, and now I can stay aware of what's going on out there for my old friends and neighbors.  

An emerging threat to both cable and satellite TV systems is on-line streaming video through computers.  New websites such as Hulu.com offer all kinds of TV shows with minimum commercials.  Example:  I am an enormous fan of the new Battlestar Galactica, which is totally unlike its 1970s namesake.  The new season started last Friday and I had a commitment that kept me away from home.  Not to worry.  The very next day it was available on Hulu and I watched it at my leisure.  Also, the commercial breaks on Hulu contain one thirty second commercial, that's all, then back to the show.  It doesn't subject the viewer to three or more minutes of an endless series of commercials.  Since my computer has a 22 Inch LCD monitor, and an upgraded sound system with a subwoofer, it delivers a true home theater experience.  Since my computer system, of course, is all digital, the picture quality puts my standard definition TV to shame.  It is one step short of HiDefinition.  

Hulu also has all kinds of older TV series to watch.  I used to love WKRP Cincinnati and Hulu has it.  I watched every episode of the series with only one twenty to thirty second commercial interruption per episode.  I always loved the fact that in that show, the buxom blonde was the only smart one in the room.

I'm not paid by Hulu, but that site and new one, TV.Com, have drawn a line in the sand that the cable and satellite people will have to deal with.  Even Netflix and Blockbuster.com offer streaming videos of the movies they rent so that a person doesn't have wait for the mail.  The Times, They Are A-Changing.

All right who is our mystery actor, Ilyena Vasilievna Mironov?   She is Helen Mirren.  How about that?  Maybe next time we'll try to guess who changed her name from Mary Isabella Catherine Bernadette O'Brien.  Email me if you think you know the stage name of this singer.  

 

A Seasonal Affliction, I Guess.

An annoying side effect of my move to Nebraska is that of allergies. I've never been allergic to much of anything except citrus products, an allergy that affects me and both my daughters. My mother was terribly allergic to citrus, also. I thought I had been suffering head colds last winter and this winter. Nothing terribly serious, but my nose would not stop running and I was going through enough tissues to cause a national paper shortage. The sneezing and the constant nasal draining was awful. I had a siege earlier this winter and then went through it again two weeks ago, then three days ago it hit me again. All this time I firmly believed those incidents were head colds, but it suddenly occurred to me yesterday that it might be allergy related. I went to the local pharmacy and picked an over the counter allergy med and it stopped the "cold" in its tracks. I have no idea what It is I am allergic to, but it seems that whenever we have significant winds this winter, I've come up with these symptoms. I have a regularly scheduled appointment with the doctor in a couple of weeks and I'll discuss it with him to see what I can learn. The town doctor actually takes time out to talk to his patients at length if need be. What a refreshing change for the "get them in and out" philosophy of most doctors in the L.A. area.

We have had some winds recently, but this remains an extremely moderate winter. Yesterday the high temp was 54, today it will be 56 (and may hit 60) and tomorrow is the same. There is a weather dividing line, however, that is not too far north and above that line it is bitterly cold. My apartment manger, Denise, told me that there have been years when January high temps above 70 have been recorded here in Alma. It's not a common event, but it has happened more than once. I noticed this morning that my bad weather boots are feeling neglected. I wore them for a couple of days in early December when we got some cold and snow, but they've just been sitting unused since then.

I'm taking my youngest, Valerie, to Kearney this afternoon where she will board a bus for Dallas, TX, to spend time with her youngest, my grandson Vani who lives there and is in training to be a fireman. He seems to be doing well. His fireman class started a couple of months ago with about twenty people and is now down to six, so he's hanging in there.

On the subject of buses, there are none locally. If you want a bus you must drive north 60 miles to Kearney or south 95 miles to Hays, Kansas. For the seniors and disabled in town, there is a service that delivers them to the hospital complex in Kearney if they need specialized medical services. The city of Alma senior center has a nice sized van with a wheelchair lift and is
available at no cost, not even for the driver, who is a terrific lady named Trish. But for the general public, you can add buses to the list of things that are near at hand in metropolitan areas but are not available to the rural populations of this country.

No Rocket Scientists Here.

I am constantly bemused by the number of drug busts Nebraska State Troopers make on I-80, which travels east and west through the center of the state. If you get on I-80 in Sacramento, CA, you can drive all the way to New York City without seeing a stop light. That makes the interstate attractive for dumb s#%$s delivering drugs cross country.

If a guy knows he's got 80 to 225 pounds of illegal substances in the trunk of his car, why in the world would he attract an officer's eye by tailgating, speeding, making unsafe lane changes, driving with expired tags, driving with no taillights, or (as happened once) driving a stolen car with no license plates?

At least twice a week the Omaha World Herald carries stories of these drug stops. Further, when the officer stops the suspect on a traffic violation and his instincts lead him to suspect something more is going on, he asks the driver for permission to search the car and the yo-yo says, "Sure. Go right ahead", apparently oblivious to the fact that after the officer looks in the trunk, the driver is going to become a "guest" of the State of Nebraska for the next several years. Of course, if the subject declines to allow the search, the officer only has to speak into the microphone clipped to his shoulder to summon a car with a drug sniffing dog.

In November, the troopers picked up a guy from California with over a hundred pounds of pot in the car, and at the booking process the authorities discovered he was awaiting trial for a similar drug running bust on I-80 in the month of March, 2008. You would think that at least he would have taken I-70 through Kansas and well south of Nebraska, but I have read statements from police investigators over the years to the effect that people who do these things "are not rocket scientists" and make some of the stupidest errors you can imagine. These ongoing drug busts have convinced me of the absolute truth of that observation and they provide me with ongoing amusement amid all the negative stories that surround them.



The young lady to the left is a cheerleader for the Houston Texans of the National Football League. Her name is Summer and the cheerleading is only a part time job/hobby. She is only of interest to me because of her full time job. Are you ready? She works for NASA and is (honestly) a rocket scientist. She holds a degree in Aerospace Engineering from Wichita State University and is a project manager for NASA. See, brains and beauty often co-exist in the same body, much to the distress of many new husbands who discover after the wedding that she's a lot smarter than he thought. Hmmm. There go his clever little scams to spend more time drinking and watching games with his buds. Right on, Summer, or as they say these days, "You go, girl".


I would think by now that all the geese would have migrated to the southern extremities and would be enjoying pina coladas adorned with little paper umbrellas, but for the past couple of days I have seen large flocks of geese flying and "honking" their way North. Why North? Do they know something we don't? Stay tuned for further information.

OK, So I Lied.

I didn't leave for a day or so: I'm back on the same day, but I hope with a good purpose.

At the end of August I "went off the air" with an internet problem that gave me fits. I swore it was the local phone company's DSL function that was the problem, but they swore it was my computer that was at fault. I am disgusted to acknowledge that they were right. A new utility program I installed to help my computer run better had tweaked my browser settings so that it would run faster but it didn't work like it should and wound up making my internet connection intermittent and then flat out dead. It took me a lot of work to find the problem, but now all is well.

I should explain that I regularly place a lot of stress on my computer because I like to see how far I can push its performance levels. I also love to try out new programs I find interesting and useful. What this means is that I regularly crash my machine. Sometimes it's easy to get it going again, and sometimes I have to wipe the hard drive clean and start over, depending on how much the "test" program screwed things up. On the good side, I regularly back up my data, music, photos, etc., so I don't lose much if my homebuilt system crashes. I, of course, urge everyone I know to back up his/her stuff regularly, which for me is the first day of each month. I have a DVD burner and it takes three disks to get it all backed up, but I have a lot of music (all legally obtained), photos and short videos to save.

I make two copies of each backup disk: One copy stays in my emergency tornado bag and the other stays at my daughter's house across town. I should state that my emergency tornado bag used to be my emergency earthquake bag before I abandoned the wilds of Los Angeles for the metropolis of Alma, Nebraska. I would urge everyone who backs up his/her computer to make two copies and stash one copy with a friend, relative or safe deposit box (as I know one friend has done). If just one backup copy exists for any of us and our place is burglarized and the thief for whatever reason grabs the disks around the computer, the backup is gone. Likewise, if a fire roars through a home and burns the backup disks, nothing good has been accomplished by the backup. Protect your photos, music, data, whatever. Make two backups and store one in another location - and backup your computer on a regular basis.

For those who like to use their computers but are not necessarily very computer savvy, please be careful of the emails you answer. In particular, a thing called "phishing" can really put a dent in your bank account. In phishing, we receive an email from what seems to be ebay, Amazon, Citibank, Bank of America or whatever and it tells us that some kind of personal information must be verified to solve some kind of problem with our account. If you look at the web page it looks exactly like the web site for that company, but it is a fake and once you follow their instructions and enter the information (social security #, credit/debit card number, address, etc) you are screwed. Normally the legitimate outfits will never ask for more info by sending you an email, and if you get one and think it might be real, do not, do not click on the link they provide you in the email. Close the letter, leave your email program, open your browser and use your bookmark or you favorites entry to go to the website for that company. If it's legitimate, you'll be able to navigate to the part of the website you need.

Another current danger is the invitation to make money by taking surveys, and if you do take the survey (which asks lots of personal questions)you will probably not enjoy the experience. One of my daughters is several hundred dollars poorer after having gotten involved in such an exercise.

The fake websites, those that are "phishing", seem to have one trait that can be a dead giveaway - they usually don't use good grammar, and that's because they don't come from the U.S and they were not put together by native English speakers. I got one supposedly from ebay recently and the page was a dead ringer for a legitimate ebay web page. In reading the explanatory text, however, it was obvious that whoever wrote it had an excellent command of the language but made a couple of grammatical errors that a native English speaker would never make. So, read everything on such a page word for word with a critical eye. As an example, I found one that used the word "irregardless". Wrong, wrong, wrong. No informative text from a legitimate organization will ever use that word. It is in the dictionary as an improper form of "regardless" and should never be used. Actually, I learned that lesson on that word many years ago in college English when I turned in a typewritten, double spaced six page assignment. In the third paragraph of the first page I used the word, "irregardless". The instructor read that far, circled the word in red and gave me an "F" for the entire assignment. Needless to say, I have been extra sensitive to the use of that word since then, and when I saw it in the fake email all my alarms went off.

Enough lecture from professor Brown. Have a good day.

Heat Wave

Got a call from my friend Jean in Duarte, CA, today. She's been hearing about all the super cold weather in the plains states and wanted to make sure we in Alma are all OK. We are super OK because all that cold is well north of us. Sure, it's not California weather here, but it has been an unseasonably warm winter with a few days of true cold and snow. The high temp today is about 50 degrees F, which is much better than the high of 10 degrees to the northeast in Omaha. Most of the snow here is gone except in the shadier spots where old, dirty snow can be seen. In fact, pictures can tell the best story.


Standing in my front doorway, this was the scene on Christmas day. Mother Nature had been kind and gave us all a two inch coat of fresh snow for the big day, which was nice because on December 26, the high temperature in beautiful downtown Alma, NE, was 68 degreees. Go figure.








This is almost the same view taken this afternoon. As you can see, it ain't summer but it's not bad. I went walking along the trail by the lake today and most of it is free and clear of ice and snow. In a couple of shaded gullies, the trail is covered with ice, so I walked on the grass shoulder to get through. No problem at all. Got in my standard 2.25 mile walk in about 45 minutes.

It's certainly not bikini weather at the lake here, but we are not catching weather hell like the people in northern Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota, where the wind chill approached 60 degrees below zero today.


Did you know that UCLA has a women's rugby team? Neither did I until someone posted a video of the team's annual "prom dress" game, which is a promotional stunt to publicize the team. If you want to seem some hard tackling by women in formal dresses, here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoG5duF1N64

On that spectacular note, I will leave for a couple of days.

The Vacation Is Over

I've been off the blog for four busy, busy months. As most of those reading this know, I spent a month of that time back in Duarte, CA, helping to care for our friend Jean Moore, who took a nasty tumble down her condo stairway. She seems to be doing quite well and is almost back to her old self.

For me, I'm still happy to be in Mayberry, or should I say, Alma, Nebraska, winter notwithstanding. In fact, it has been an extremely moderate winter. We had four days in December when the high temp was six degrees F, but for the most part we have had no evil winter weather. Today our high will be 48 degrees F and by Thursday we'll be at 55. It was that temperature last Saturday, so I took my trusty Mercury Sable to the local car wash and gave it a badly needed cleaning. Why do cars seem to run better after they have been thoroughly washed and vacuumed?

Winter fishing has not been available here. The ice out on the lake is simply too thin to support a person and the ice around the shoreline has made it impossible to cast out. Northern Pike and Walleye are available in the winter here, but getting a lure out to them is next to impossible. Of course, I've got to get my 2009 fishing license this week. Being both a veteran and a senior citizen, it costs me only $5.00 for the year.

Both my girls are doing fine and my granddaughter, Enchantra, will graduate from high school in May. I'm not saying that the school is small (as is Alma), but the graduating class consists of 18 seniors. She has taken her ACT exam and passed with flying colors and plans to attend Concordia college in Seward, NE. She likes the school's computer graphics reputation and wants to be a professional in that field. Seward is a bit south of Lincoln, NE. so she will about three hours away if we want to visit. Concordia is a Christian college operated by the Lutheran church's Missouri synod, which means it is a serious place and is not known as a "party" school. Of course, if kids want to party, they'll find a way to do it regardless of their location. Enchantra has been awarded a scholarship which will pay for part of it and she has applied for a Pell grant as a result of her ACT score. She is a talented artist and I am delighted that she wants to use her gift of art to build a career. She fits right into that old saying, "Get a job doing something you enjoy, and you'll never work a day in your life".

I am relieved to be back on this blog. I've been jotting down some notes on things I want to write about and I have finally broken through the logjam of inertia. More a bit later.