Must make it easy to remember birthdays.

I worked with a girl in Reno, Nevada with the birthday of 12-7. She was probably born in 1965 as she was 18 in 1983. Not sure she really even understood the significance of the date of December 7. She did live next door to my Medieval History professor from the University of Nevada, Reno so maybe she did. I worked with her from when she was about 14 through when she was 18.

You wonder how some of these famous dates affect how people feel about their birthdays like Pam K., felt about hers. 9-11 is another one of these.

As a devout "Do it Yourselfer" I designed and built my own house in western NY. It was one of a kind, quite nice, and I miss many interesting things about it. The roof rafters were 16" o.c. 2x10's 26 foot long. Big house.

I also delivered all three of my boys. My wife of 35 years was much more comfortable with me at the "business end" instead of some strange doctor. My thinking was that any guy can start the job.....but a real man finishes it. It was not that difficult...my wife seemed to have the more strenuous job.....it was another DIY project.

My job started more after, as she carried the boys for nine months each...I carried them for like 20 years....My wife prayed for girls, but we got 3 boys. I explained to her that it was like baseball....3 strikes and you are OUT. No more "at bats".....so she prayed for granddaughters and now we have 3 of them....all beautiful and precious.

Frank

I am a former gandy dancer.

Gandy Dancers - YouTube

I had to look that up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandy_dancer

So was my dad-- I haven't heard that expression in quite some time. Thanks

My maternal great grandfather was a railroad engineer.
 

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k2...psa3201dfa.jpg

This is 1952 when he retired.

I did something similar in Pensacola back in the late 70's. I purchased a new home in 1976 with a VA loan in St. Petersburg. A year later I sold that home and moved to Pensacola and purchased a new home there in 1977. Both times I took notes of every phase of construction and sub-contractor that went into the building. I checked into the law and found that I didn't need a contractors license to build a home if it was for myself and I lived in it for one year.

In 1978 I sold that home in one week and moved into a rental and purchased a lot for $7500. I drew up plans for a 2600 sf rancher with a 2 car garage and had a residential designer make me 7 sets of blueprints, you didn't need an architects seal unless it was commercial property. I went to the nicest subdivision in Pensacola, where at the time they were building homes for $300,000 and above. I ran down framing crews, brick masons, etc. and got estimates for every phase of work. I had a friend who was an outside salesman for a home improvement center, this was before Lowes and Home Depot. He gave me estates for every bit of materials from windows, doors to roofing. I took the deed for my lot and the plans and all the estimates to a bank and got a construction loan for $52,000 paid out in four draws.

All this time I was working a full time job 40 hours a week, I did volunteer for the swing shift so I didn't have to work until 3pm, which gave me the mornings to be at the job site. In 1980 I sold that home and bought a bigger lot for $15,000 in an area of the future 'Parade of Homes' and moved into another rental. I got another construction loan, this time for $70,000 and I even had an 18x36 swimming installed. It turned out to be a beautiful home. Both homes I contracted we used framing with 6" exterior stud walls 16" on center, also every feature I could think of I had installed, central vacuum, fire place, ceiling fans, etc. Only took 11 weeks to finish from the time we broke ground until we moved in. Even though I only lived in both homes for just over a year, I almost doubled the cost when I sold them.

I was born in the United States, but not in a state. My birth date is 4-5-45. My mother was born on 4-4, my dad on 4-14 and my first wife on 4-23. I have a grandson who was born on 9-9-90 and another one born on 9-9-96. My legal name is actually 3 last names so I've used a nickname my entire life. I have 3 siblings, 3 children, 3 grandsons and 3 granddaughters. I believe in the Triune and I love numbers!!

I was on stage with Mike Super, a current contestant on America's Got Talent. It was on a Disney Cruise several years ago.

My grandson was born on Halloween and they lived in Salem Massachusetts.

I have read The New York Times every day since 1962 and the New Yorker magazine every week since 1958.

Trivia about me
 

I've worked in three different areas.
1. I treated people with radiation for cancer.....BODY
2. I taught religion to teenagers.....MIND
3. I was a hospital chaplain.....SPIRIT

Body, Mind and Spirit so nothing left.....I retired!!!!

You must have been one of their quite younger readers?

What language do you think in?

When I was 14 years old I had my hair cut by the White House barber.

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.
 

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k2...ps96a009b1.jpg

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.

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k2...ps1c123f00.jpg

One of the encouraging letters I received in 1992.
 

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k2...ps9242ecda.jpg

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.

Lance Armstrong and I have the exact same number of Tour de France wins.

Jon,
What's the significance of the dollar bill? If I write them, will they send me one?

What a shame that he had to cheat and then bully so many people to hide his actions. It seems he probably did this by threatening lawsuits, bad press and pulling strings he had as a Tour de France winner.

When he broke up with Sheryl Crow I thought something was a little off with him. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Armstrong

I have made some very bad choices in friends too and did not know how to handle breaking away.

That's one of the Where's George bills which I usually give out as change in my meanderings around the Villages.

I spent that particular bill yesterday getting some hot dogs. Which I will put some ketchup on!!!! I gave it to a very cute blonde. I mean the dollar bill. LOL

Those two letters are from the 110 or so that I sent the ObamaCare people back in March 2014. I hope that they see the importance of making libraries of all sorts part of the practical delivery of information for survivors/victims of crimes. Of course, most of this delivery is driven by local communities not by the Federal government. I had wanted them to authenticate all the letters I sent them like the one from the MA AG Office and the one from M. Kathleen Price, the Law Librarian of Congress from around 1990 through 1994 .

I had complained to all the US Senators of that Congress and some of the US Representatives back in 1991 about subtle and then not so subtle attacks on my mental health for wanting to be honest about this niche in library services towards survivors/victims of crimes. This was while I was still employed at the University of Minnesota Law Library or after I lost my employment contract around June 1991 and was studying for the Minnesota Bar but also trying to get through all the stress I was under from people pretty much telling me that my law librarianship career was over. I got a 251 out of a needed 260 but did write the Minnesota Bar Examiners about all this induced stress trying to get some leeway. No such luck so I moved from MN to CA around Thanksgiving of 1991. The CA Bar is much harder so I never gave it a try. Sending all those letters probably cost me about $10,000 when figuring in all the copying, postage, labor, and the food and rent to stay near Dinkytown to do it. I was not treated very well while writing all these as word did get around and Dinkytown is very dependent on the U of MN for customers. And, I was being very critical of actions taken by U of MN employees.

What happened from my writing all the US Senators and some of the US Representatives about this rather Machiavellian approach to dealing with do gooders? The Library of Congress made it a policy because they found it so effective. I do not know WHEN they made it a policy but would love to find out its genesis. So did Stalin find this approach extremely useful!! According to a CBS News Report from around July 6, 1996 or maybe it was July 6, 1995??? No good deed goes unpunished. Unfortunately according to the CBS report back then a target of this approach -- a Library of Congress woman employee-- had lost everything trying to fight back but that was the last I heard of this matter. Cannot say that I remember the name of this lady but I sure could relate to what she must have been going through.

I wish it worked that way that you send them a good idea and they send you back money with how to continue fighting the good fight. I did get forgiveness for a loan from the Northern Nevada Office of the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education (WICHE) around 2000. This was for my MA from the University of Denver Graduate School of Librarianship and Information Management. They helped pay for my education in Colorado. I promised to pay them back or work in Nevada for a certain amount of years. I never could find a job in a library in Nevada but all the work I did pro bono for victims/survivors of crimes from CA, MN, IL and FL helped victims/survivors of crimes in Nevada. I mentioned all the problems I had had to the WICHE Office and backed these up with documents if they had deemed it necessary.

I do hope that if another person seriously affected by some event they had no control over (like me and the 2-24-1976 Reno, Nevada murder of Michelle Mitchell and the subsequent investigation, trial, appeal, etc.) sees some problem with the delivery of services and tries to do something about it that he/she is treated much better than I was.

The Andrea Doria did most certainly sink. The Stockholm was towed to port.

After the captain left the Andrea Doria, it took 24 minutes for the ship to sink.

This is a great thread with many folks doing some things that are very interesting. Sorry if this looks like a continued hijack, but I found this little take off about the Andrea interesting...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBz7cSxZzOA

When I look at film like this, I ponder what will our "film" look like in 60 years? Not to be discussed on this thread...

I wonder if she was on the same crossing as my husband. Their family sailed
on the Leonardo from Italy in 1960.

I believe it was 1963 after her father passed away. She sailed to and from New York with her mother and brother.

I play the bass guitar in a "Trans-Siberian Orchestra" cover band in northern Ohio.