After 67 years there appears to be another Clark in the bloodline. The evidence is pretty solid that one Douglas Clark of North Carolina is my half-brother. We're debating which of many less than flattering terms we should apply to our father.
Doug is a retired contract administrator and naval officer.
Another voyage of discovery. Let us hope for a pleasant journey.
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Daily Dose
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Blogus clarkensis: Just a few observations and the occasional modest proposal. Of course it should in truth be called the Occasional Dose. If you'd like to participate write to me. If it gets weird, consider that weird attracts search engines; sorry.
(Many images can be clicked for a larger version.)
Had to laugh. MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan's show today showed a promo in which a prop was a stack of books, one labeled "Arithmatic" (sorta like arithmetic, I guess).
When the segment actually aired, that book was missing from the stack. The theme of the segment was the low performance of US schools. Spelling counts! ;) ;) Sep 27, 1999 -- When I was in the second grade in 1949-50, my two best friends at Longden School were Suzanne Holmes and Annette Blanchard. At the end of the day, I hated to get on the school bus to go home. Suzanne and Annette and I have gone down mostly separate roads over the past few decades, but it's been my great joy to renew our friendship since a class reunion in 1990. In August of 1998 they invited me to go canoing on the Green River in Utah, near Annette's home. Suzanne came from Southern California, and I came from Seattle. We camped out along the river for nine days, along with Rocky Mountain friends, Dion Corkins, Alene Watson and Sandy Dickinson. Pictured at right are Suzanne, Rees and Annette on the rainy first morning of the ten day excursion. Strangely, I'm the only one with white hair. After nine days of paddling (see pix below), we were happy to let the jet boat carry us back up the Colorado to Moab. Guess what! Again a school bus. It turns out that I was never so smart again as I was in the second grade. All things considered, I'd rather be in the canoe. Although I'm fairly sure I was invited for my ability to fling large bundles onto the bank from the canoes, I don't mind; the company made it all worthwhile -- no, wonderful. At the end of the trip, I hated to get on the school bus to go home. Plus ça change... Here are some photos by Suzanne.  The Green River (shown here cleverly disguised as the brown river) descends through thousands of feet of sediments to its confluence with the Colorado. Our trip was about 120 miles.  We camped out each night. Two days of rain were followed by seven of sunshine. Rees the amateur was lucky to have an experienced paddler like Dion Corkins to keep him pointed in the right direction.  The well-appointed resort-like facilities along the waterway. There were other guests: One morning I discovered within our camp the paw prints of a cat that had been drinking from a small tributary overnight. They were four inches across.  The shade was often the most beautiful part of the trip in the middle of the days. We asked Suzanne to photograph some spectacular scenery, but there wasn't any. (That's the understated humor; an understanding smile would be good right now.)  An experimental oil well drilled decades ago produced little oil, but it provided a source of mineral water that encrusts the surrounding rocks with orange, red, yellow and brown precipitates that support a variety of tiny organisms. (Here are two of the tiny organisms inspecting the others.)  A highlight of the trip was the opportunity to visit several cliff dwellings (approx. 1,000 years old).  The jetboat awaits alongside the Colorado. Hard to see in this pic, but the water one one side appears green by contrast and on the other it's red; thence the names Green and Colorado (red) rivers, one supposes.  The school bus; a metaphor for life. It comes too soon, and just in time. The moral of the story is that if Annette Blanchard Rose ever shows you a picture she drew of a flower pot, say something nice. It may take 50 years, but there's a huge reward. (I could explain, but it's a whole other story.) Bobby Jindal's Republican response to Pres. Obama's quasi State of the Union address last night would have been totally forgettable if not for his gratuitous sop to Obama's race and a silly giveaway line about research expenditures that was emblematic of recent Republic views of science. Here's my comment from the Seattle Press.
Up yours, Bobby Jindal! Seattle - 24 February 2009 - In his rejoinder to Pres. Barack Obama's Feb. 24 address to Congress, La. Gov. Bubba Bobby Jindal argued that the Federal budget should forego spending $140 million for "monitoring volcanoes," intoning the very words with disdain. For the 3.5 million of us who live on and around the congealed mud flows of the largest volcanic eruptions known to North America during the last ten millennia, a few bucks for listening equipment seems like a good idea. So, Bobby, if we're going to rebuke politicians for bad decisions, should we take the same attitude toward say, levee repairs for the 400,000 who live in a city that lies BELOW SEA LEVEL? We haven't; you shouldn't. This is not the time to set Americans against one another for the crumbs of a shrinking pie. Let us not abandon all pretensions of generosity and shared purpose and simply have at it. UPDATE: After searching for a calculator to confirm the arithmetic: The per capita cost of the said scandalous volcano monitoring, $0.47 (yep, 47 cents) per citizen. Not bad for the preservation of Portland, Tacoma, Seattle, Everett, Hilo, Anchorage and 100 other population centers. Keywords: Short-sighted, selfish, Republican, moron! (Our apologies to morons everywhere.) Rees Clark, Publisher
Despite the welter of garbage on YouTube, it is technically a great service. May their tribe increase. Here's the littlest Clark practicing his customer service skills. He'll be managing our Tokyo office in a few years, just as soon as he's tall enough to reach the phone from the desk chair.
Today's news is from the genealogy front. I found a death record for my great-grandmother Belle Perry Clark, recorded in Everett, WA, following her death of cancer Jan. 24, 1903, at only 48 years of age. Perhaps it explains why my grandfather never spoke of her.
An interesting part of the record is the addition of a new great-great-grandmother, Permelia Woodin, Belle's mother, born in Connecticut. That removes a spelling quandary but not much more. Permelia PERRY is listed along with husband Ambrose and daughter Belle Perry in Berlin, WI, in the 1880 census and shown as 58 (my grandfather Perry Alexander Clark was born in Berlin in 1883 to Belle and Frank Alexander Clark). The Woodins or Woodens in CT in 1820 or 1830 censuses have only the name of the head of household. They are numerous enough that the presence of any daughters under 10 is not much of a clue. (The naming of other members of the household was still a couple of decades away.) So if little Permelia Woodin b. 1822 is in your family tree, give me a shout. ;) They aren't called The Happy Days for no reason. I wish I had a dollar for each Disney show I watched in the 50s with George, Angie, David, Alice and Mary (they know who they are). According to CNET News' Green Tech, "Air New Zealand, along with Boeing, Rolls-Royce and Honeywell, retooled one of the four Rolls-Royce RB211 engines on a Boeing 747-400 to run on an unusually fruity blend of half Jet A1 fuel and half jatropha oil, according to Air New Zealand.
"Jatropha is a flowing succulent plant commonly grown in the semi-arid areas of India that produces seeds containing an oil which can be harvested and processed into a biofuel." "International Air Transport Association (IATA) lists Jatropha a promising next-generation biojet fuel for the airline industry because the hardy plant can be grown in poor quality soil needing little water." The experiment is truly impressive, and it blends the organizational capabilities of major industry with the use of an otherwise "useless" feedstock that can be grown by poorly capitalized farmers in areas now lacking commercial crops. I've been working for the past three years with a local biodiesel manufacturer whose feedstock is another waste material. There is an important economic and political challenge in all this. Every project I've studied in this arena that has had any success has become a target of big business or other solely selfish interests, whose agenda is to own the technology or to destroy it to preserve a competing process or product. The opportunity for mankind is to expand our energy resources in ways that allow more, not fewer, people and places to participate. We should enable the jatropha farmer and other producers of alternative crops yielding food and energy to visit our tourist attractions as we visit his, to study in our universities as we study abroad. The new fuel technologies, with lower capital requirements and greater sustainability, offer a path to more equitable distribution of the income and wealth that proceed from modern, energy-dependent economies. We should not waste this opportunity. Early Wednesday, Dec. 31, a Y2K-like excursion created its own small-scale panic for some owners of Microsoft's Zune music player, leaving Hip Hoppers and other owners without their ration of trashin'.
Microsoft said that it had traced the problem to a bug “related to the way the device handles a leap year.” Apparently the Zune was expecting 2008 to have 365 days, not 366.* Now normally we don't worry much about airy-fairy prophecy, but if the gods of Mt. Redmond could overlook this leap year, what dire events might the Zune trauma presage for the one in 2012 that's driving believers in the latest folly to wring their hands with trepidation over the forecast end of the Earth (after all the failure of one's Zune is surely almost the same thing). Be afraid, be very afraid! The perspicacious might want to discard their Zunes now to let the aura dissipate. --------- * Now in actuality, the Zune cannot "expect" anything. It's a machine. The problem originated with the programmer(s) at Microsoft who are too young to understand the consequences awaiting those who ignore Leap Year. Had they grown up with a proper dose of Al Capp and Sadie Hawkins they'd have been more respectful of the date.
You think English is easy? Try to explain these to a first-grader or your ESL class. Each sentence contains one word spelled the same with different pronunciation and meaning. Rules? What rules?
1) The bandage was wound around the wound. 2) The farm was used to produce produce . 3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse refuse. (We have a million of 'em. Sorta... ) ;) Robin seems at a loss about what to "attack" first on Christmas day. Thanks to the Internet we get to chat frequently. A CNN headline asserts today that "Ice storms leave New England powerless" with exceptional snowfall and icy conditions. For those of us who live west of the Rockies, one can only hope that the weather will improve but the social and political symbolism will remain. They've been coasting on John Adams and Daniel Webster long enough.
I've been working with friends on a new laptop computer accessory called LappyToppy. It's a flexible plastic insert to separate the keyboard and screen when the cover is closed to prevent transfer of oil and dirt to the screen.
Buyers can upload any pictures, one for each side, to personalize the product. Advertisers can buy in bulk and can use both sides or make the personal side available as a promotional item. Lots of options. See the link for more information. ;) And you thought Betty MacD hated fowl By frankalexander - Nov 26, 2008 Betty MacDonald had nothing on AK Gov. Sarah Palin when it comes to bashing barnyard birds. At least Betty came right out and said she hated them. Ms. Palin, by contrast, asserted her benevolence by first "pardoning" one turkey and then - one assumes having lulled the others into a false sense of security - she doffed her sheep's clothing and posed next to the Exit as others met their fate, all with the same unflappable, unstoppable stream of (presumably turkey) baloney. To those of you Americans inclined to vote for her for anything, please rethink. To others, remember the people of Alaska in your prayers. Happy Thanksgiving! |
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