E PLURIBUS UNUM

It is cowardice, not blindness, when you are afraid to look.

You don’t look, because if you looked, you’d see. And if you see, you’ll know.

And you don’t want to know. Because then you can deny that you knew.

And claim there is no way you could have known.

But it is your job to know. To do otherwise is dereliction, or worse.


http://blog.usni.org/?p=4926

But contrary to what the phrase suggests, keeping up with the Joneses is not about keeping up with a particular person or family. It is not about the Joneses at all. The idol in front of us is the image we chase. Bypassing one Jones, we will always find another ahead. Though it may seem we are making headway, it is a pursuit without a real goal, for it is a pursuit with another end always in sight. In this race, even the Joneses themselves cannot rest in their status or trust in their records.(Worlds largest family reunion),and(The most common name in Whales). The Guinness Book of World Records will always have another edition on its way to print.

If you could step back from your most-current eager pursuit would you see its absurdity? Could you admit the fleeting nature of success and fame and treasure? Would you divulge the weariness that arises within the incessant human desire to keep up with the elusive Joneses? Perhaps it is true, as a wise man once said, that many of our curious ways are a meaningless chasing after the wind.

But this man also said there is one endless pursuit quite worthy of our days:

"Remember your Creator
in the days of your youth,
before the days of trouble come
and the years approach when you will say,
'I find no pleasure in them'...

Remember him—before the silver cord is severed,
or the golden bowl is broken;
before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
or the wheel broken at the well,
and the dust returns to the ground it came from,
and the spirit returns to God who gave it" (Ecclesiastes 12:1-7).

(Jill Carattini)

My home town, South Pekin, population maybe 1050, or so. Right in the heart of Illinois. Although I was not born here, I still call it my home town because I grew up here.
I was born in a farm house, a few miles from a wide spot in the road called Gladden Missouri.
My father was a Saw miller, and my mother was a house wife, and mother to,(eventually) seven children, me being the oldest, and the only boy. That's all she ever was, and that's all she ever wanted to be. She was very happy in this role. It was her divine calling, and she did it very well.
At the end of WW-2, My father bought a sawmill outside of the small town of Maeystown, in southern Illinois. The sawmill burned to the ground in 1948, and we moved here. I was in the second grade.
It was a great little town to grow up in, and still is I think. There has been some change, but not a great deal. The population is about the same as it was in 1948, although two new additions have been built at both ends of the town. There are a lot of new houses in my part of town, since a tornado came through here in 2003. There have been eight tornadoes through here in the last 15yrs. In 1938, a tornado wiped out the whole town.
The big news in town right now is, we are getting a new water tower. That's a pretty big deal for us small town folk. We would like to have a new Library Building too, but I guess we don't have enough money for both, they have been here since the 1938 tornado. The Library building is a cement block building, that also houses the Police Station.
In the very beginning the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad built a huge Round House, and switching yards here, and the town just grew up around it. These were the days of the great Steam Locomotives,
and in those days everybody that lived here worked for the railroad. Almost all the houses were made from old box cars, one of which I lived in until I was 17, and joined the Navy. It wasn't much, but my Mom kept it clean,(with a little help from my sisters). There was a lot of love in that little home, and most of the time we didn't know how poor we really were. I could write a whole blog just about growing up in that house, which I may do later.
Eventually, three of my sisters married railroad men, one a Conductor, an Engineer, and a Yard Master. Only the Conductor still lives today.
In the summer we played baseball almost everyday. We would choose up sides, and sometimes we didn't have enough players to man up both sides of the field, so if you were right handed, you would be out if you hit the ball to right field, and vice versa. We would play for hours, and on the way home, hot and sweaty, we would stop at the Gas Station, that is if we had at least 11 cents, we could get a handful of peanuts for a penny, and a 12oz bottle of Hires Root Beer for a dime. We would drop the peanuts into the Root Beer, and eat the peanuts as we drank the root beer.
There were no video games, no cell phones. When we finally got a telephone, we were on a 4 party line. Only two families on the block had a television, so I had to go down the street to my best friends house to watch it, and that was only on Friday & Saturday night.
Those were the best of times, as I remember it. Of course they weren't all good. I remember the Summer of 1952, I was terribly afraid that I would come down with Polio. Of course I never did, and I am thankful even today for that. We had 4 or 5 cases here in town between 1949 and 1952.
There are still a few friend here in town that I grew up with, including my loving wife.




Out my front door EL_GE My street EL_GE
My house in center EL_GE
Next street over EL_GE
Corn field 2 blocks away
Clover & Japanese Beetles

On July 11 of this year, I had my 70th birthday, and one thing I noticed is that there are very few if any other seventy year olds blogging on Opera, or anywhere else for that matter. Therefore I might be considered by some, to be a little peculiar. Some of my friends who are my age, may be saying,(Behind my back of course) "Larry should get off that computer and get a life", but as far as I'm concerned, I do have a life. I enjoy my computer, and I love the friends I have made here.
I really didn't think I would live this long considering the fact that my parents died very young with heart related problems. My father at 59, my mother at 47. Angioplasty saved my life, which did not exist a generation ago, and the word cholesterol was unheard of.
My daughter-in-law called me on my birthday, and asked if I felt any older, I said, "Not any older than I did yesterday I suppose, but I think there is the psycological effect of moving from your sixties to your seventies, as there always is when you move from one decade to the next".
My wife,(Bless her heart), who is two years younger than me, still gets embarrassed when I park in a space marked as senior citizens only, probably because she walks two miles everyday, but it doesn't bother me at all. She doesn't seem to mind though when we take our discount at the Chinese Buffet.
I've always been against putting my picture, or anyone from my family on this blog, but I thought maybe some of you might want to know what we look like,(Or maybe not). Anyway here we are, just two ordinary folks.