This morning I recalled another "family saying"--"Who died?" Again, this saying must be used in the appropriate context in order to get the full flavor. One should wait for an encounter with a person who is telling a story to another person or group; then in the midst of the tale, you should interrupt and ask "Who died?" This will provoke one or more of three possible reactions: a) merriment among the cognoscenti; b) the story teller will begin at the beginning, to the annoyance of the group that has been there from the beginning; and/or c) a response from one of the listeners, the substance of which is "Never mind. We'll tell you later". This may provoke an exchange which results in the story being summarized in an unsatisfacory fashion or eventaully being told all over again anyway. Use of the "who died?" rhetorical device can prolong a gathering around the kitchen or dining room table almost indefinitely or at least until someone has to go to the bathroom, the phone rings or your baby has awakened screaming, requiring you to attend to him/her.

After watching how this was developing (and seeing Therese's excellent suggestion ), I thought that the best location for this material would to organize a book for Mom and Dad Woods. They can be accessed by going to "book" in the navigation block on the left side. Additional pages within each book can be created as part of the book just as easily as blog entries can be. Therese, you can post your word version as an attachment if you would like. I also wanted to mention that there must be many pictures (and perhaps other materials) that could accompany and help explain or illustrate these stories.

After a delightful visit to old friends in Lufkin, Texas we hustled eastward to prepare for our planned Appalachian Trail hike. We spent most of one night parked in a Louisiana rest stop and arrived at a Hiawassee, Georgia campground late the next afternoon. From there we spent a day making food drops at Wesser and Franklin, N.C. and Hiawassee and Neels Gap, Georgia. We then drove our rig to Amacolola Falls State Park where we checked in and parked our little Ford Focus. We then drove the motor home to Sylva where we spent the night at what will be our home the second half of this year.

Here's an article about an etiquette guide for Americans who will be travleing abroad. It says it has been distributed widely on cmapuses. I wonder if Brian, Kara or Dan got copies. It might be distributed with passports in the future.

"Etiquette Guide"

I know some of you saw this broadcast on Sat. night and inquired what was written about the event in the press. Here is an article in the NYT discussing it.

"blogging on Colbert"

Not another article about how awful one political point of view is, but an attempt to understand why certain positions and arguments seem to work in how the West acts. I thought about this after reading Dan's paper which discusses the theory about leading a country by creating a national myth. Lest you think the article is negative, I refer to the last paragraph, which points out an observation that Mr. Steele, a black intellectual, makes about our society today:

"Possibly white guilt's worst effect is that it does not permit whites--and nonwhites--to appreciate something extraordinary: the fact that whites in America, and even elsewhere in the West, have achieved a truly remarkable moral transformation. One is forbidden to speak thus, but it is simply true. There are no serious advocates of white supremacy in America today, because whites see this idea as morally repugnant. If there is still the odd white bigot out there surviving past his time, there are millions of whites who only feel goodwill toward minorities."

Well 3 months of hard work is about to come to fruition tomorrow when my client starts using SAP entirely for all of their business. This project has been my most demanding to date for a few reasons. Not only did I take responsibility for the main object on the critical path but I also took my first leadership role and was team lead for data conversion. Overall it's been a really good experience and I think we've done a great job. It's likely that I will be retained at this client for a while longer to assist with on going data quality efforts.

Sam and I are also really close to finally getting a place of our own. A closing date of May 12th is what we're currently aiming for. After we close we'll probably take our time to move in since there's no immediate rush. It's been a long process trying to find a place and we've hit a couple road bumps along the way but we're hoping this one's going to work out. It's in Rahway, NJ which is about 40 minutes from NYC. Rahway is currently undergoing a lot of redevelopment and we're expecting it to be a much different town in a few years. A few benefits of living in Rahway are that it has a brand new train station with trains to many nearby locations (NYC, Newark Airport, Jersey Shore), it's still relatively cheap cost of living compared to other towns around NYC, and it's not that far from Philly.

My first remembrance is when I was 5 years old entering first grade at St. Columbus School. Even though we lived behind the convent in a little house I didn't want to stay in class and I tried to run out the front door. I remember the nun holding her wide dress across the front of the door so I couldn't leave.
I was five years old when my brother went to Rome to become a priest. He was Father Francis. He received two doctorates in Rome. When he returned to Albany diocese he became the judge of the diocesan tribunal and chaplan at the college of St. Rose. He later became a parish priest, first pastor of St. Madeline Sophie Church. He helped Father Patrick Peyton, founder of the Family Rosary, and received permission from the Albany diocese to become co-director of the Family Rosary Crusade.

Patty is here tonight to start me on a journal. We have had a fun weekend with dinner up on the Shack above Snug Harbor watching the pelicans brigade and the traffic on the bridge. We enjoyed breathing the fresh air and seeing the smoke from the brush fires in the distance. Tomorrow we will go to church and see how the new community building is coming along in Fort Myers.

Patty says to pick a story I feel like telling again. I find it interesting that my Dad grew up in central Illinois in Abraham Lincoln territory to very young parents on a very poor farm with no hint of ever going on to school. Yet, he was known as one of the greatest educators in central United States when he died. There is a football stadium named after him in Burlington, Iowa. He built this stadium in a ravine in downtown Burlington Iowa with concrete steps. These steps hold two thousand people. The night lights were the first ones installed in the country in a high school west of the Mississippi River. This was a former lumberyard. The seats go up one side of the stadium and the wooded hill on the other side of the stadium has the glory of autumn leaves right during the football season. The high school has been rebuilt out on the edge of town but they still use this football stadium.

"Aren't high gas prices something that environmentalists want?