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"

Anna and Emily are waiting to hear the story of Philomena, my Grandma Effting, who is your Grandma Bracewell's mother. She was a very young child when the civil war started. Her father, my Great Grandfather Sattler, entered the union army and fought under General Grant. There were not the financial arrangements in those days that there are now. When he was gone their house supplies got down to where they had nothing in their house but flour. They took my Grandma as a very small child to a Catholic orphanage with the understanding that they would come and get her when the war was over. Years later when they went to the orphanage to get her they found out that the Sisters of Mercy had placed her for adoption. The Sisters did not know who the people were and they did not have their namesbut they thought they lived in Cincinnati, Ohio which must have been near where the Sattlers were living at the time.

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.

When Grandfather Spencer's wife died, he had a daughter Rosetta. Then, he remarried someone we know as Aunt Jose. She had a younger brother, my Grandfather, Frank Edward Bracewell. I don't know how old Frank was when his sister married my great grandfather (Spencer). But, it is possible he was early teen and he and Aunt Jose raised them in one household. Anyway, he married Rosetta when she was sixteen and he wasn't much older. By the time he and my Grandma were twenty years old they had three children.
So my father Ray Bracewell his, older brother, Frank, and sister, Edna, were raised under extremely primative conditions. Their beds were homemade, 4 posts and ropes, with three feather beds underneath and two feather beds on top, comfortable and warm. They didn't wear pajamas and all they wore in the daytime were overalls. The only food they had to eat was in season. If you have an apple tree you know how many apples you would get off of that in a whole year (not a lot) it only lasts for a couple weeks. My grandfather was a good farmer he always had a good vegetable garden and he was noted for being able to build a haystack which would shed rain so the hay inside would not spoil.

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?

This article explains why my life is about to get more interesting.

Amsterdam

Affordable accommodation within Amsterdam's tiny and coveted historic center is almost impossible to come by, and even the shortest of taxi rides seems to cost at least 10 euros ($12.40, at $1.24 to the euro). But if you take your cues from the locals who get around on bikes and make do with living on the outskirts, this city can be done on a tight budget.

Where to Eat Cheaply

You get what you pay for when it comes to food in the Netherlands, where most ingredients are imported or grown at fairly high cost in greenhouses. So unless you have a strong affinity for bitterballs — fried meatballs that are the buffalo wings of the Netherlands — you can't avoid spending a fairly substantial amount for decent meals. Fortunately, the intimate and cozy Balthazar's Keuken (Elandsgracht 108; 31-20-420-2114), while considered one of Amsterdam's top restaurants, is also one of the most affordable, serving up a three-course prix-fixe meal at 24.50 euros. A typical menu might start with an assortment of five hot and cold appetizers like wild spinach croquettes or cinnamon crostini with spicy beet root, followed with a choice of a meat or a fish main dish like a bouillabaisse with saffron, fennel and red onions and end with a dessert of espresso mascarpone with prunes poached in sherry. A bottle of house wine is 15 euros.