When our son was 5 (in 1988) we got him into playing club soccer in our town. My wife became the team mom because she made the team banner and the snack schedules. 12 years later I was on the State of California youth soccer tournament board.

I also became a Stanford University Grad - was at a 4 day Positive Coaching youth sports seminar at Stanford in the summer, stayed in the Stanford dorms, ate in their cafeterias, and attended classes in their classrooms taught by Stanford profs. Still get monthly emails 15 years later.

.

A confused one -- I dream in German; get mad in English, German, Russian and Farsi. Mostly think in English but frequently have to translate a word from German to English before I can say it. Makes for some strange hesitations.

Wow:loco: I can speak in "toddler" and play like one too :22yikes: and my hesitations are due to, wait what was I typing . . oh yeah I like those icons.

My great Uncle Robert Trueblood.
 

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This is my great uncle Robert Trueblood around 1990. He had been living near the Arizona State University campus in a garage. He had very cheap rent and it was air conditioned and heated.

I remember visiting him from time-to-time in that garage where it reeked like garlic. He was of the philosophy that bathing was unhealthy so he would only bath maybe once a week. He was born around 1920 but seemed to have a lot of the values and outlook of a beatnik from the 1960s. He had claimed that the garlic was good for his pores as was not bathing but once a week.

I had considered going to Arizona State University where I had also been offered a scholarship in 1982-- instead of BYU-- but I had thought that I would have to explain my great Uncle Bob to any friends that I might back then. (I only lasted at BYU for about ten days and then dropped out before taking any tests. I graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School in 1989).

My LSAT scores were in the 90th percentile and I had two BAs with GPAs of 3.71 and 3.73 or around there. So, I got into a number of law schools but only BYU and ASU offered scholarships. ( I could use these same scores in 1986 when I applied to about 12 law schools getting into all of them but Stanford and Marquette).

My great uncle Robert Trueblood for instance once ordered a burger very rare while I was with him at a restaurant near ASU. I also chose a burger but not so rare.

He was paying. He insisted. But when the order came he dug in, decided that the waiter gave him the wrong burger and promptly grabbed mine and devoured that.

We had had a weekly correspondence by mail from around mid 1976 through the day he shot himself near Phoenix in March of 1992.

He had not wanted to bother anyone so he drove his car to the funeral home grounds and shot himself in the parking lot in his car.

He had had some very bad breaks in his life but did go out thinking of others. He had some very painful disease in the last years of his life.

The last month of his life he had visited us in California and I had picked up that something was very wrong -- especially when he asked me if I wanted his car-- but unfortunately I had not followed up on my thoughts about what might happen.

I did remember to keep a close eye on my food though when we both ordered clam strips at the restaurant in Bodega Bay that February of 1992. https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-B...92902960723600

I ran a playgroup in my small town for 19 yrs. One year I was doing circle time and I was singing and none of my parents were singing with me except one and he didn't know the words but at least he tried.
After most of the parents left, one of the parents helping me clean up says "Did you know that was Trey from Phish"? "Who's that" I ask. She says "you know the group . . they just performed for over 100,000 people". So I go home and call my nieces and nephews and say "you are so going to want to know me now". "Why"? they ask. I tell them and they say "no way, you sang with Trey". "WAY" I say, them "No way", me "WAY" after a few more of these, I hear "OMG, what did you sing"? "WHEELS ON THE BUS and OPEN CLOSE THEM"! "No way" they moan. "WAY" I say with glee. After a long pause I hear, "how was it"? "He wasn't that bad" and I hear laughter. Thats right, they know me now.

Three of my brothers 5 children were born at home with a midwife after two bad hospital experiences. I delivered my first "by myself" in a hospital, not by choice, and attended the birth of a friends as a support person with a midwife. It was one of the best experiences of my life. I will never forget the miracle of life being born from either side of it.

Trey Anastasio - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I had to look him up.

My husband immigrated here from Sicily at age 11 in 1956. His mother and father had booked passage for the family, which included my husband and 4 of his siblings. A couple of days prior to sailing, they were told that my husband's health records had been lost and they would have to wait another two weeks to gather all the appropriate documentation regarding innoculations, etc. His father told his mother to take the other children and go and they would follow two weeks later. His mother said "No! Either we all go together or we don't go." So, the ship sailed without them, AND SANK!! It was the Andrea Doria.

They arrived safely two weeks later.

SS Andrea Doria - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That's quite a twist of fate.

The Andrea Doria didn't sink exactly. It was severely damaged in a collision with another ship and was towed to New York. Lives were lost.

Wow - the entire WIDTH! Way to go.

Nice story.

One item for me - I have never had a drink.

One for my wife - she made two transatlantic crossings on the Leonardo DaVinci before she was a teenager. The Leonardo DaVinci was the sister ship of the Andrea Doria.

This is a drawing I did which looks quite a lot like a woman I went to see Amadeus with in downtown San Francisco in 1984 and then traveled across the bridge to a Thanksgiving party with the Oakland Chorus. We were the only straight couple in the bunch. She sang with the Oakland Chorus.

She worked with me at Information Access Company in Belmont and had asked me out on a date.

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One of the encouraging letters I received in 1992.
 

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I had posted copies of a lot of these letters on Findlaw's boards back in 2001 or so. They attracted rather nasty comments from some lawyers, law students and then a five year cyberstalker/cybersmearer.

But, I hope some of you have seen what I had been trying to do. I contacted victim assistance providers like this one in MA and asked them what they would like to see in law libraries and other types of libraries.

You really have to see the 40 or so other letters I copied and sent to this Victim Assistance provider on July 16, 1992 to get a clear idea of what I wanted to accomplish.

Mainly I wanted to get libraries more involved in the delivery of practical information to victims/survivors of crimes.

This is something taught to me at the University of Denver Graduate School of Librarianship and Information Management. Anticipate a need not being met and fill that need with whatever resources best fit it. I thought victim assistance professionals and not so much law professors would be the best judges of these needs.

I did think what I was doing was very professional in approach even if I was basically doing it on my and my parent's dime.

This kind of approach I hope is why I was nominated to 24 Marquis Who's Who publications from 1992 through 2002.

It probably did make me some enemies though among people who arrogantly insist that they know what is best for a certain group with respect to information needs.

I have a large number of letters like this and will not bore you with posting them.

Basically, I just wanted to show that my approach was well thought out and not based on any kind of emotional re-action to my own experiences related to the murder of Michelle Mitchell in Reno, Nevada on 2-24 in 1976. This is my birthday. The U of MN Law School did teach me how to at least try to be very objective about whatever I was doing. You often cannot pick your clients as a lawyer and if you are in a law library setting you really cannot pick and chose whom you want to help and whom you do not want to aid.

In 1992, I tried to contact 5-10 victim assistance provider in every US state and US territory and asked them what they would like to see in their local and other libraries which would help survivors/victims of crimes cope. As I have said before repeatedly, I had checked libraries in many states for something I would like to help survivors/victims of crimes from February 28, 1976 through when I wrote all these letters in 1992 and I found very little of any practical value.

I looked at libraries abroad too and contacted various victim assistance providers in other countries.

Please look at the letter I put up earlier in this other thread. https://www.talkofthevillages.com/fo...21-post11.html It is from that August (August 5, 1992) from the Law Librarian of Congress, M. Kathleen Price.