The rain

The rain, it falls upon the just, and the grass and the trees and the flowers. Two inches of rain in the last day. Soft rain, gentle rain, soaking rain.

New 10 Commandments

1 Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you. .
2 Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect. In all things, strive to cause no harm.
3 Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted.
4 Live life with a sense of joy and wonder.
5 Always seek to be learning something new, test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them.
6 Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; respect the right of others to disagree with you.
7 Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reasoning and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by others, question everything.
8 Do not discriminate or oppress on the basis of sex or race.
9 Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you.
10 Value the future on a timescale longer than your own.

Fog

It was extremely foggy when I went for my walk this morning and that made me think about other fog experiences. Three times stand out.

In 1976, when we were on our way back from Nova Scotia, driving down I 81 past Scranton and all the way to Harrisburg, the fog was so thick that you could hardly see 50 feet in front of the car. It took hours and hours at 15 to 20 miles per hour to get from the northern Pennsylvania line to Harrisburg. Most of the time I followed a semi, staying back far enough to just see his brake lights.

In April of 1957, I had been out visiting my future spouse and had started the 25 miles home at about 1:00 am. It took me until 5:00 am to travel the 25 miles because the fog was that thick. My brother-in-law was coming up the road in front of his house from the other direction. And I stopped to see what he was doing in this fog. He said that he was coming home from the Hospital. My sister had had a daughter about 1:00 and he was just getting back to do the milking.

In September of 1954 I was doing the milking on the farm. One morning I got up at 5:00 am to go down to the barn. When I looked out, all I could see was a little spot of light in the fog, from the light on the pole down by the road. I went down to the milk house and got the milkers ready and then went over to the barn. Usually the cows would come up out of the pasture field when they heard me moving about in the barn, but this morning they didn't come. I stared down through the field to fined them but the fog was so thick and it was so dark that I was walking blind. I really couldn't see one step in front of me. I could tell by the slope of the land that I was not near the creek at the bottom of the field. When the land flattened out I knew I had about 75 feet to the stream but I still couldn't see any cows, so I took about 10 more steps and fell headlong over a big brown swiss cow. I was there in the middle of the herd and couldn't see them. The cows had all been laying down and they didn't move until I fell. That cause enough commotion that they got up and I could hear them but still could only see the one I fell over because I was standing right beside it. Once they got up, they walked up to the barn and I walked along with them.

Drought

Mom and I went for a walk last night and found that the stream behind our house is dry for the first time in the 32 years since we have lived in this house. Oh, there are a few puddles but no water is flowing and the rocks in the stream bed are dry. It will take 15 to 18 inches of rain to get us back to a normal situation.

Defensive driving

Mom and I are taking our 3rd defensive driving class this week. If we take the class every 3 years we get a discount on our insurance and since we are not doing a lot of other things it is a good thing to do. And, we do learn or relearn a few things about driving. Like the 3 second rule. What you may ask is the 3 second rule? Vell, I'll tell you. It is how far you should stay behind the vehicle in front of you on the highway. Oh. But how do you know? Well, you pick a marker that the vehicle is passing and see if it takes you 3 seconds to get there.

Also, when you are stopped behind another car in traffic, how far back should you be? You should be far enough back to see its tires on the road. That allows you room to pull around the car if it is stalled and maybe enough room not to get smashed into it if someone hit you from behind.

Learning to Drive

When I was 14 I was working on the farm and drove the tractor all of the time. Sometimes on Sunday afternoon I would take the tractor over to my friends house about a mile and a half away and we would just sit around and shoot the breeze.

But there was another way that I got around. My sister Peggy was living at home and working in the Sylvania plant at Brookville. She bought a 1942 Ford Coupe to use to get to work. It had a high speed differential which meant that it didn't have much power but once you got moving it would run like a sacred rabbit. Since we lived on the back road and I knew every road in the township I would ask her to borrow it when I wanted to go to a 4-H club meeting at Shanondale or to visit another friend somewhere in our part of the world. Several tmes I took the back roads to Summerville on Sunday afternoon, or to Limestone to go swiming.

I took my drivers test the day after I was 16 and the cop said it seemed like I had been driving for a while. I said yes I learned to drive on the farm.

Road work

Until 1952 the road past our house was dirt (mostly clay) and in the winter and spring of the year it got deep ruts whenever it was wet and the ground was not frozen. Sometimes it got so bad that we had to park the car up at the T (about 2/10s of a mile away from the house. For a month or more in the spring the only vehicles that got through were the mailman in his Model A Ford and the Milk truck that picked up the milk. Whenever the road dried enough we would hook the drag to the tractor and fill in the ruts so we could get the car in to the house.

In the wintertime the road often drifted shut with snow and sometimes the Township did not plow us out for a week or more. In 1944 we were snowed in for 5 weeks before they brought in bulldozers to open up the road. Dad had to park the car at the main highway, about a mile away,and walk out to get to work and he had to carry in groceries. My oldest sister had to walk through the snow to get to the bus to go to high school.

Things began to change in the summer of 1952. Dad convinced the Township Supervisors that the road needed to made passable in the winter for the school bus, mail, and milk truck, so they agreed to haul in sandstone to build a base for the road. That summer, in June my friend Roy and I were still 14, but old enough to get work permits, and the Township hired us to work on the road breaking the big rock into little rocks that the roller could crush in to the dirt. We worked about 4 weeks busting rocks on a little over a mile of road from Pumptown to the T. We got $1.00 per hour and worked about 8 hours a day. I was in pretty good shape when we finished. Of course we still had hay making and grain harvesting and chores to do but we were happy to have some money of our own.

With a solid stone base on the road the Township made an effort to keep the road open all winter and that made things a lot better.

Contractors In Iraq

According to an article in Harpers magazine over 1,000 private contractors(mercenaries) have been killed in Iraq and over 13,000 have been wounded. This increases the american deaths by 25% and wounded by about 1/3.

Emerson on Thinking

Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson-

Quote of the day

"The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory."
Paul Fix

Age 13

When I was 13 years old my dad worked 8 hour shifts on the gas wells: midnight to 8 am, 8 to 4 and 4 to midnight. My brother was away at college so I had a lot of responsibility on the farm. Every Third week I got up at 5:00 am and milked 25 cows, then fed the calves, chickens, and pigs and then washed the milkers. I washed up and ate breakfast at 7:00 and then set the milk cans out for the milk truck and got on the bus at7:20.

The next week when dad had the 8 to 4 shift he did the milking morning and evening and I did the feeding and washed the milkers. When dad worked 4 to midnight, I came home from school at 4:20 and changed clothes and started milking at 5:00 pm. We ate supper at 6:00 pm and I was usually in bed by 8:30.

The Farm Bill Again

The Senate Side

The Senate Side Barbara Boxer wants to protect California Farmers.

Cute Kid

Here is a picture from a few years ago that I think is pretty cute.

Bonus Years

This morning I’ve been ruminating on life in general. I think that I am now in my bonus years. That is, considering how long my parents lived, every year I get now is a bonus. I plan to enjoy and live fully what ever time I have. To be able to enjoy my children and my grandchildren is the greatest pleasure. Every day there is a new surprise, something to look for, something to be thankful for.

Sunday Morning

It is very quiet here this morning. Very few people outside when I went for my 6:00 am walk. Kind of cool at 62 degrees. It felt like a Cape Cod morning, just right for summer. I've had my second cup of coffee and scanned the paper. Not much there that I cared to focus on. I made a few updates to my Shelfari page. I'll work on my reviews as time goes by. No hurry with that

If a tree falls

If a tree falls in the woods when you come out in the morning to take your walk and you hear it and then see it fall would you be surprised? I was this morning at about 6:15. I had just walked out of the house and heard a crack, crack, crunch and looked toward the woods behind the neighbors house. The tree fell with a whoosh, snap thump. Wow.

The air was still. Nothing moved. The tree just fell.

Being a somewhat curious person I walked down the woods path at the end of my walk to see exactly what happened. Maybe the tree fell over the path. Nope it didn't. It had been standing on the edge of the creek and the stream had undercut its roots. It just happened that it chose 6:15 as its time to fall.

Well that is life on the Court.

Bolivia in the Parade

Parade

Reunion

My family is planning a reunion of the offspring of my grandparents. This year it has been setup by my niece and nephew and it will be held in south central Pennsylvania.

All of the children of my grandparents are deceased as well as most of my older first cousins. At age 69 I am the 2nd from the youngest grandchild of the 39 grandchildren.
Of the 39, I believe that 16 are still living. The oldest grandchild was born in January 1911 and the youngest in February 1941.

There are 121 great grandchildren, that I am aware of. The oldest was born in 1942 and the youngest in 1975. There are 136 great great grandchildren that I have information on. I'm sure there are more that are not included in my genealogy data base. The oldest was born in 1965 and the youngest in May 2007.

Of the 136 great great grandchildern only 6 males carry the Reinsel name.

Golden Compass

Bernie's Daemon

Beaver Lodge

Most often beavers build their lodges in the water but this one built one on the court. Her odometer recorded 12 miles today. Mostly from the back yard to the street.

Bamboo

I've spent the last 2 days cutting dead bamboo and mom has been carrying it up to a pile on the street. Still have a bunch to cut and carry. The pile on the street is getting to be too high for mom to reach and it keeps growing sideways. I'll post a picture later.

Green space, ball fields and traffic

Last night the City Council held a hearing on a proposal to put two soccer fields on a tract of land that was purchased by the City for open space. The proposal included artificial turf, field lights on 70 foot polls with cell phone antennas , 100 parking spaces for cars, rest rooms, and several zoning variances. It would have required cutting many large trees and grading 8 acres of the area down by as much a 20 feet. In my view this constituted development of the space. I attended the hearing and spoke against the proposal.

I believe that the end result of the hearing will be that one field will be constructed, fewer trees will be cut and no lights will be put up and no cell phone antennas will put up.

I believe that the area is unsuited for even this reduced level of activity and I feel that the change in traffic flow will create problem for residents of the subdivision. However, the City Council seems determined to proceed with construction of one field.

“Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got, till it's gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

They took all the trees, and put em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got, till it's gone
They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot”

Lyrics by and sung by Joanie Mitchell

Stored things

Years ago we stored some things above the carport. I guess we thought that sometime some of our children might want what we had saved for them. Today I got the stuff down to inspect it. Most of it will get tossed but a few items may be retained.

There are 2 tricycles, 1 wagon, one potty, 2 potty seats, 1GI Joe jeep and trailer, 1 GI Joe, 1 play school shopping center, Several model airplanes, a broken high chair, part of a stroller, a small person step stool, and an old hall light.

Grandma

I was still three years old when my Grandma died in May 1941. I don't remember that. What I do remember was the Grandma and Aunt Marcella lived on the one side of our house and we had the other. Grandma was an old lady (80 years old) who was not very well and she spent a lot of time sitting in her rocking chair. My Aunt Marcella took care of grandma and really was like a second mother to me. When I wanted something that I couldn't get at home I would go over to their side of the house and ask Marcy. She would usually find a way to give me what I wanted. I remember asking her to read to me and she would. Or if I wanted coffee soup instead of what we were eating at home I could have it. That didn't always sit well with Mom.

I think it was in the spring of 1940, the year I turned three, that Aunt EmRose and Aunt Lois, who lived in Akron, Ohio, came for a visit. They were 57 and 58 years old at that time but to me they were really old. They were siting on the side porch along with Marcy and Grandma and of course I was out there with them. One of them got a banana washed it and laid it on the porch rail for me to find. I did find it and ask where it came from. They said that the Easter Bunny had laid it. Well I look it over and it was still wet because they had washed it. I wouldn't it because the Easter Bunny had laid it and it was still wet. They got a big kick out of that and that story got told over and over.

That same year Dad and Uncle Joe decide to have a wiener roast up on top of the hill behind the house. There was a kind of trail that went up to the top of the hill and Dad loaded Gandma, Marcy, Mom, and me in the old Buick and drove to the top. The other kids hd to walk.

After Grandma died in May of 1941, Marcy joined the St Joseph Sisters convent in Erie. She took the name St Emily Rose. Her sister Margaret , Sister Jane Francis, was all ready there, having joined in 1914 when she was 17years old.

1941

I was four years old in 1941, so a lot of my memories are fairly cloudy. One the that is clear though is that people were really upset when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Mom and Dad listen to the news every evening that they could get the battery radio working so that it would pick up KDKA from Pittsburgh.

One evening I went with Dad down to the barn when he went to milk the cows. I remember the light from the kerosene lantern was not very bright and it seemed to cast all kinds of shadows so it was a place where it was good to have Dad there. I was sitting up on the ledge behind the cows watching him milk and I was asking him questions about the war that President Roosevelt had declared. Why were we going to fight? Would they be fighting here? Where was Japan? Where was Pearl Harbor? He was trying to explain where Japan was and who the Japanese were. I guess I thought about that for a while and then I said, "If God hadn't made the Japs we wouldn't have to fight them." He readlly agreed with that and said I had that about right.

When I was 10 years old

When I was 10 years old we got electricity on the farm and in the house. Bill Clinger was the electrician who did the wiring in the evening after his main job and I helped by holding the flash light when he had to work in a dark area. It was a big deal for us to get electricity. For one thing it meant that we could have a radio that didn’t run on batteries. And we could have a real bathroom with water pumped to the commode, and sink and shower. No more house! We could have an electric washing machine rather than one that ran on a one cylinder gasoline engine. We got lights in the barn and didn’t have to carry a kerosine lantern. And we got an electric milking machine.

That was the year my sister Susie got married. The reception was at our house and there were a lot of people there. Mostly big people. No kids to play with. During the afternoon a big thunder storm came up, so everyone was inside.

Dad had drilled a water well close to the house and the rig was still sitting there. A bolt of lightening struck the drilling machine and shocked some of the people who were sitting on a metal daybed in side the window about 8 feet from the rig. No one was seriously hurt but it did cause a lot of excitement.

We learned later that the father of one of the people at the reception was killed by lightening that afternoon while he was working on a dragline at a stripmine. That was a sad thing.

I think Peggy started her senior year in highschool that year and Ed was a junior. That year I started 5th grade at Summerville. Helen Wesson was my teacher and she was a tough old girl. Helen and her sister Mary had been teaching 4th and 5 grade forever, or so it seemed.

Coming from out of town and being one of the 3 Catholics in the school I had to defend my rights for a while until the kids got use to me. Glenn Reed, Dick Garis, Don Getty and Tom Fitzsimons turned out to be pretty good friends. Later on Tom Eshelman (Mouse) and Jack Snyder got added to our group.

During April at the end of 5th grade. Roy Gourley’s parents bought a farm around the hill from us. Roy was one day younger than me and he thought that he had to prove how tough he was so he tried to bully me on the school bus. I took it for a while and then decide that I needed to do something, so I turned around to face his seat and hit him on the nose. I broke his nose and it bled like everything. We have been friends ever since.

Back on line

It has been nearly a month since my last posting. I guess I didn't have much to say, but I did have a lot to read since Christmas.
I have just finisned "The Island at the Center of the World" by Russel Shorto. This is a must read book for anyone who has an interest in American history. Shorto tells the story of the New Netherlands, starting in 1624 and ending in 1673 when it became an English colony named for the Duke of York. Much of the story is tied to a Dutch lawyer, Adriaen van der Donck. We have much that we aquire from the the work of van der Donck, including the basis for the 1st and 2nd amendment to the Constitution. Freedom of speech and feedom of religion were ideas that van der Donck worked hard to preserve in the Manhatten colony and these were preserved for us under the colony of New York.
I have also finshed "Mysteries of the Middle Ages - The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the cults of Catholic Europe" by Thomas Cahill. This is the fifth book in Cahill's "Hinges of History" series. The other four are: Sailing the Wine Dark Sea; Desire of the Everlasting Hills; The Gifts of the Jews; How the Irish saved Civilization. In my view all are worth reading. Mysteries ranges from Alexandria to Rome, Paris, and London. In it you meet Pluto, Philo, Clement, Constantine, Leo the Great, Gregory the Great, Augustine, GregoryII, Hildegard, Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aqino, Frances of Assisi, Roger Bacon, and Dante. It is an easy read but it will require a second time through to capture the relationships.
I have lined up on the shelfwaiting, "The Audacity of Hope" by Barack Obama; "On Being Christian" by Hans Kung; "Saveges" by Joe Kane; "One Christmas in Washington" by David Bercuson & Holger Herwig and 'Foreign Aid" by Carol Lancaster.