Happy Birthday Dad!

Tuesday, November 28 was my father's 80th birthday! My dad grew up in Mulvane, Kansas. Since 1968 has lived in Vista, California. On April 12, 1957 he married Sara Ann Schrooten, originally of Miner County, South Dakota. They were married for almost 46 years until she passed away on January 1, 2003.

My Dad's accomplishments during his 80 years are many. He served in the United States Army during the Korean War. He made his career as a Chemistry teacher, and was a professor at Mira Costa College in Carlsbad, California for more than 25 years. After retiring in 1991, he was later bestowed the title of Professor Emeritus. Throughout his life, my dad has been an active leader at church, most recently at Escondido First Church of the Nazarene. Yet of all his many accomplishments in life, probably his greatest accomplishment was fathering two sons, Andrew and myself!

So, Happy Birthday Dad! May you have health, vitality, and happiness in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead!

Happy Thanksgiving via Western Union

Those who know me (Clayton), know that I am a history buff, especially when it comes to United States history. So as a "blast from the past" allow me to offer you a Thanksgiving greeting in the style of a 19th Century Western Union Telegram.

Three things to note.
(1) In the original days of Morse Code, there were no symbols to differentiate between upper and lower case letters. Thus telegrams were printed in ALL CAPS.
(2) The original form of Morse Code did not have any symbols for punctuation. A period was indicated by the word STOP. Punctuation symbols like apostrophes, commas, and hyphens were omitted. The end of a message was indicated by the word END.
(3) The cost of sending a telegram was calculated by the number of words, thus it was common place to use short incomplete sentences to communicate your message.

So let's step into the "Way Back Machine" to the year 1875 or so....

WISHING YOU HAPPY THANKSGIVING STOP SAFE TRAVELS STOP DONT EAT TOO MUCH STOP GOD BLESS THE PEAKS END

College Daze?!

Here's a picture of me from my days as an undergraduate in college, some 20 years ago. As you can tell, my hair was thicker, I had a shaggier beard, and I wasn't wearing eyeglasses yet. As Lee Iacocca said of himself in his book Talking Strait,"the hair and the eyes go first. The brain...later!" ☺

Actually, this is a picture of Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), New England philosopher and author known for such classic and influential works as On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, and Walden. Thoreau is often associated with the philosophy of Transcendentalism, although Ralph Waldo Emerson is arguably the "poster child" of Transcendental philosophy.

So now the $64,000 question: why do I have a post today on Henry David Thoreau when it's not his birthday, anniversary of his death, or any other significant date in his life? Two reasons. (1) I think he has a cool looking beard. (2) Although it's been more that 15 years since I've read any of his works, he did have some pretty cool things to say about life. (3) Folk-singer and author Michael Jonathan of the Wood Songs Old Time Radio Hour has recently finished a play titled Walden - The Ballad of Thoreau. In this play, which became available in October, Jonathan depicts "the last two days Henry David Thoreau spent before leaving his cabin at Walden Pond". Oh yeah, here's a fourth reason: this is a busy weekend, and putting a post on my blog is a fun way to avoid doing work! Take care!

The Case of the Missing Blog Entry

I think this is a case that maybe even Sherlock Holmes himself couldn't solve. A week ago, I believe, I posted an entry to this blog titled "On the Matter of Blogs". In that post I gave a brief essay about the nature of blogs, and described how one must continually keep a blog up-to-date with new and interesting entries. This is especially important when you have thousands (if not millions) of people who regularly turn to blogs like this one as a source of inspiration, hope, and joy! After that, I delved into some science fiction about a self-working blog program--a program that would track my thoughts and actions, and then automatically post entries to the blogs within specific parameters that I would define from the outset. (Without those parameters, there's potential for some embarrassing things to be posted!) Of course, such a self-working blog would take away the personal touch. Plus it would be one more step towards that day when machines will rule the world.

However, somehow that blog entry disappeared into cyberspace. It's gone, and I have no way of recovering it. I have no idea where it went. So we'll just call this "The Case of the Missing Blog Entry." If you happen to find that blog entry floating around somewhere in cyberspace, please let me know! I would hate to think that someone has compromised the security of this blog and actually stole the entry. Who knows. It's a mystery that may never be solved.

Hannibal Folk Life Festival

The annual Folk Life Festival was held on historic Main Street in Hannibal Missouri on October 21-22, 2006. I was able to attend on Saturday, Oct. 21 to play with the "Black Harry Possum", a local band that plays Celtic and old-time music.

Below is a picture of some of the members of "Black Harry Possum". At the far right, wearing a black cap and playing the tenor banjo, is Chris Foss. Chris is the leader of the band, and with his wife Melanie owns The Jam Factory music store in dowtown Hannibal.

Here's a close-up of me "frailing" away on my 5-string banjo with the "Black Harry Possum". I think it's a pretty good photo, if I say so myself!