Well, it's been a busy two months since the last entry...Hardly seems that it's been that long... Two more trips east had us visiting the Martin guitar factory in Nazareth, PA, where Kenny and a friend played the instruments and dreamed...In truth Kenny has improved in less than two years to the point that he played background solo guitar at a wedding a few weeks back and earned $100...Not bad for a fifteen year old kid...Presently he's playing trumpet in the school band and guitar and lead vocals in his own group. He's been writing a lot of songs lately so has a few good ones to play in the local club. Beth, Kenny, his girlfriend Hanna and I also floated canoes down the Allegheny in August, which is the main river flowing through town. It is used every few years for the national canoe races...( yes, there are such things). Beth also participated in the annual river cleanup which, besides the usual tires and refrigerators, pulled a Harley Davidson frame from the water...Surprising what people will throw into the river! In early September we visited friends and attended a Jackson Browne concert in Scranton, then stopped at Penns Cave as tourists on the way home...The cave is water filled, hence the boats, and offered a cool diversion on a hot day....But No doubt the most significant decision Beth and I reached this past month was setting a date for our marriage next.... June?

Mom

I have not written lately about my mother( seen here with one of my brothers in August '09 ), affectionately called "Gram" by friends and co-workers in the office... but she turned 86 in late April, and still works two hours a day or about 10 hours per week, filing charts and similar clerical duties, and can walk without a cane so long as it is not too far, nor uphill, and there is no time limit. I drive her shopping or anywhere else she needs to go, and help her around the house a little, as do Nancy and Beth. Mostly she still functions living alone and is able to dress and bathe and cook and feed herself. Every morning will find her sitting at the table reading the paper and eating her 1/2 banana and piece of toast and sipping orange juice and tea. Lunch is a handful of grapes and chips and whatever is leftover, while dinner is often a TV dinner mixed with vegetables and meat followed by a snack of one or two cookies and a piece or two of her cherished dark chocolate. Sometimes ice cream-coffee or chocolate flavor-finishes the day. That regimen and her cocktail of medicines seems to have led to her long life, in which she stays mentally challenged by doing nightly crossword puzzles.
Having observed her for four years now, there is no doubt that her deterioration has increased in the past six months, particularly in her forgetfulness and loss of hearing. When she sits in on group conversations she is no longer able to hear much of what is said, and much of the rest passes by too fast for her and her hearing aid to process. When we deliberately speak loudly and slowly she may not recall that we had said the same thing only yesterday. Still her sense of social etiquette has not diminished, for she always remembers to send get well cards to sick friends and was recently upset because she blurted out what she thought was an inappropriate comment during a bridge game. The rest of us think the other person probably deserved it, but such is her good heart that it bothered her anyway.
She feels well enough to enjoy life most days, limited as it is, and plans to stay alive until she doesn't feel well. That means not doing anything extraordinary medically but doing what it takes-such as laser eye surgery next month-to make living comfortable. Economically she pays all her bills with social security, medicare and related insurances, and has rarely used personal savings except for major expenses such as a new roof and furnace last year. Probably her generation is the last to enjoy the charity of taxpayers to such an extent, but what is one to say to the elderly who are simply holding on for dear life-as is all of Washington and the rest of America? We love her and to distress her with anything other than patience seems to only belittle ourselves.

Skateboard Park

Last autumn, after a contentious 15 plus years of discussion and money raising attempts, construction was finally begun on a local skateboard park. The woman who had been the heart and soul of it's support, and who had accumulated nearly $200,000 in private contributions for it's construction, resigned from the commission because of disagreements with the city officers over what type and quality of materials should be used. The city-according to her- did not really want the park because of their general apathy and fears that it would attract unsavory types and associated behavior ...which of course do not exist in the rest of the city, particularly in the mayor's office...So she took her money and reported the city to the state, which had given the city a $24,000 grant to be used toward the park but which the city officers had hoped to use for something else. With their cards exposed the city was forced into choosing between a poured concrete park and a cheaper one built using prefabricated pieces. They chose the latter and had the opening ceremony a month ago but because of the recent heat and substandard construction the concrete is beginning to crumble and the grout fall out of the cracks and the steel plates connecting the pieces to the platform loosen. The company responsible is so far backing their products, but the disgruntled woman believes that ultimately the city wants the park to fail so that another tennis court may be added to the rarely used three that are already there. We'll see. She still has over two hundred thousand which she will return to the donors if that happens.
I took the action photos on the 10th, and had a firsthand glimpse of the unsavory characters, who were not the young skaters, rather the rotund woman on the bleachers and her equally challenged sister? cousin? who were permitting a 5 year old barefoot, shirtless and helmet-less son to ride his bicycle while a dozen guys rode back and forth doing tricks and almost colliding with him several times. Her reasoning was that it was a public park and that the rules allowed children so long as they were "supervised". When another mother and myself politely suggested that perhaps it was not in the child's best interests to ride there at that time, the woman let loose with a profanity laced tirade that we should "mind our own f-ing business" and other such niceties. After several more close calls and two more tirades we called the police, which prompted her and her children to leave. Although the officers eventually talked with her, ultimately they were powerless to force her to be a more responsible mother. Similar people have generally been called white trash, although around here I call them-both men and women- troglodytes, and have observed that the gene pool truly is not as diverse as in more populated areas.

East

Just returned from a spur of the moment weekend trip east, where Beth and I hiked to the Pinnacle lookout on the Appalachian trail and visited my son Forrest and his wife Barb. T'was HOT over the holiday in the mid Atlantic states-in the nineties with increasing humidity-but we had a great time hiking and biking and relaxing. Because I have been living in Warren for nearly four years I feel nostalgic about all the old walks I used to do, so everything is new to me again, as of course much of it is to Beth. I miss a few of the people there but not my old life, so visiting is a pleasure now that I have the time to absorb it at my leisure! The landscape is just as beautiful, and in a few years- God willing- we will be able to spend more time traveling and exploring the entire country, and really discover this old planet of ours.

Northwest Bank, Warren, PA

Northwest Bank Inc, (NWBI) headquartered here in Warren and where my fiancee Beth works as an auditor, was voted best bank in customer satisfaction by the JD Powers polling company for the Mid Atlantic region...no small accomplishment, and attributable to both the friendly, small town attitude of the employees and a common sense, "old fashioned" style whereby profits are substantiated by actual money and physical assets. What a concept, huh? Anyway, in addition to last years recognition by Forbes as a top institution, this should bode well for the companies future plans. They held a small celebration in town this morning, with representatives from the 170 branches- Warren to Maryland to Florida-taking part.

Healthcare

While walking today I wondered aloud whether it is a fair trade to exchange a healthy gene pool in the name of compassion, which essentially is what our modern health care system does. I do not advocate eugenics, rather am raising the philosophical question, because keeping woefully sick people alive to reproduce instead of dying of 'natural' causes is inevitably preserving so-called defective genes that otherwise might be evolved away. Many of health care's highest cost dollars go to sustaining people through expensive medicines and procedures, and many of the rest of the dollars go to keeping elderly people alive for a few more years. Working in this medical office and talking to nurses and doctors confirms this. The alternative would be to do nothing or divert those dollars to younger, healthier people-or animals or other purposes- but that is both politically and some would say morally unacceptable. I purposely will not offer my organs after death because of these questions, and my firm belief that death is not the enemy as modern medicine imagines. Much of our convoluted system has arisen from noble, compassionate intentions, but I personally feel that diverting money to sickly American adults rather than to the children suffering worldwide is not the morally responsible thing to do. Perhaps compassion in any form and place is all that matters however, regardless of where or to whom it is directed.

These are the flip flops my youngest son Skylar designed last August that won a company wide contest sponsored by his employer OLD NAVY and were voted as the best male shoe design by fellow employees of OLD NAVY, THE GAP and THE BANANA REPUBLIC. It had been narrowed down to the top ten and his came out on top. They just arrived in stores this past week and are constructed of 100% recycled materials and sell for $5.00 a pair. Congratulations SKY!!! Now if only the company would acknowledge his contribution with an in store promotion or some of the profits or a bonus or a thank you or... ANYTHING! Makes my cynicism about corporations all the more justified when NO ONE in management or the design department or ANYWHERE else even called to tell him they would be arriving...... Pathetic. Am I biased about this? You bet. Too bad it just mirrors all the other impersonal behavior exhibited by too many large companies. Anyhow... if you stop by Old Navy, please pick up a pair for his sake...As for the ladies, a female employee won the female design, so help her out too...thanks