It's been a month?

Milo and I took our morning walk in the dark this morning.  The sun had not yet shown it's self as we started down the driveway.  We made it to the fork and as we turned around the eastern horizon was ablaze with a layer of clouds.  We stopped at the flag pole and raised the flag.  We read the names on our list and paused to honor all of our fellow veterans.  I told Milo that I needed to post another entry.  He agreed.

It was a rather quiet Halloween in Sunshine.  The children's party went well, even though the road was wet and muddy.  The children enjoyed the games in the Sunshine school house and the hay ride through the Sunshine cemetery.  There had been a lot of talk about an adult party but it didn't happen this year.

I lost a good friend this last month.  My girlfriend, Chili died.  Chili was my neighbors gray horse.  She was 28.  I have been taking care of Chile when her owner, Holly went out of town.  She would trot down to see me when I drove up next to the corral.  I would climb the fence and walk across the corral to her stable.  As I did, she would walk behind me and press her nose up against my back, giving me a love tap.  Holly said I was the only man she would show any affection.  I will miss her.

Chili

I have been lucky enough to work out of my home office for the last three years.  On June 1st, my contract ended and I found myself unemployed for the first time in a long, long time.  I had forgotten what it was like to look for a job.  I has been hard on this ol' guy.  Nobody wanted to even interview an old fart with gray hair.  I applied at as many places as I could and frankly,it was really getting me down.  I found myself getting very depressed, feeling like I was worth more dead (life insurance) than alive.  I even ended a couple of relationships with some people I really cared about.  One evening I started thinking about someone who had carried me before when I was down.  I prayed.

Three weeks ago I started my new job.  I was hired to manage the Boulder Map Gallery.  It is a quaint store in downtown Boulder, not far from Mork and Mindy's house and the old New York Deli.  I love the job.  Here is the view outside the front of the store:

There is a small park with Boulder Creek running through it across the street.  It seems to be the meeting place for some of Boulder's unique characters.

Thanks for checking in.  I hope all is well in your neighborhood. 

Remember, There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.  - Ben Williams.

Smiles, David

Snow, Snow and more Snow

Well, it wasn't a lot of snow but it was measurerable.  I guess we could call it the first official snowfall of the year, at least one where the snow stayed on the ground.  The snow stayed on the ground for about 4 hours.  It won't be long until it stays for 4 months! 

Smiles!

David

First snow flakes

 

Sunshine School house, 2007, 107 years old.

Milo and I started down the driveway a little late this morning.  It was very cool and crisp, the sky was a very bright blue without a cloud to be seen.  We missed seeing Bob, the school bus driver, and waving to all of the Sunshine kids on the bus.  We stopped at the Sunshine School house and raised the American flag.  Today we raised the flag to honor one of our neighbors who recently passed away.  Long time neighbor Bebe left this world on Saturday.  She had lived in Sunshine a long time before she and her husband, Bob, moved to Moab, Utah.  We spent time with them at our SCSSYYSR (Sunshine Canyon Summer Solstice YaYa Sisterhood Reunion) in June.  Bebe was very active and will be missed by all of her family and friends.

We experienced our first snow fall yesterday.  It wasn't much, just a few flakes but a reminder that it won't be long........  Oh I just can't wait!  LOL

Milo noticed that I had dug out my HAM radio (Portable) and was wearing it on my belt this morning.  He pushed his nose up under the bottom as if to ask me "what's up with that?"  I explainedthat I wanted to keep it close, just in case any bears wanted to bother us.  I have been an amateur radio operator for 15 years.  HAM operators have the ability to communicate with other HAM operators anywhere in the world.  Shortly after receiving my license I was involved in a conversation that was "out of this world".

One of the high schools in Fort Collins, Colorado has a program in the study of space travel.  They even have a mock space shuttle set up in the classroom.  NASA has a public relations program called SAREX, allowing the astronauts to communicate with HAM operators on the ground (little know fact  - most of the astronauts have a HAM license).  Our amateur radio club, working with the high school, contacted NASA and arranged a private contact with the shuttle.

NASA agreed, a time and frequency were agreed upon and we went to work.  A HAM station was set up at the high school, including a transceiver, antenna with a rotor and recording equipment.  The idea was to to be able to point the radio station antenna at the shuttle while it passed from horizon to the other.  The maximum window is 8 minutes. 

As the appointed day drew closer, we became more excited.  Club members were assigned different tasks (mine was to record the entire event).  On contact day the entire club joined the students.  At the agreed time we started to call the shuttle.."W5NAS, this is WK3S......W5NAS, this is WK3S" (call signs have been changed for this post)...we repeated this three times.  With anticipation, we heard what we were listing for...."WK3S, this is W5NAS".  It was the voice of Dr. Marty Fettman, astronaut and veterinarian (from Colorado State University) aboard the space shuttle Columbia, mission STS-58.  We passed the microphone around, allowing the students to talk while we held the contact.  We held the contact the entire 8 minutes and then it was over.

Three months later, the high school held an assembly.  The guest was Dr. Fettman.  For me, the fun part came just before the assembly began.  Dr. Fettman met with those of us who participated.  He gave each of us an autographed photo, a mission patch and a hearty "thank you" for making the entire event a success.  

 

 

My connection continued

There is an old saying that in Wyoming, you are only one person away from knowing everyone in the whole state.  This brings me to my brief story about my connection with the old west.  There was a gentleman by the name of Tom Horn.  Tom was the last man hung in Wyoming in 1903.

Tom Horn

Tom was a cowboy, US Army scout, and a stock detective.  There have been many books written about him (Blood On the Moon by Chip Carlson is one of the most recent).  There have also been two different movies with Steve McQueen and David Carradine playing the part of Tom.

Geronimo

Tom, according to his autobiography, Life of Tom Horn, government scout & interpreter Written by himself, University of Oklahoma Press, ISBN: 0-8061-1044-9, was the man who convinced Geronimo to surrender to the US Army.  To the day he died, he felt Geronimo was a great man.  Tom stopped the cattle rustling in Wyoming.  It is rumored that he was on the search party that chased Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as depicted in the movie of the same name.  Tom was hung for the murder of young Willie Nickell.  To this day people will argue over his guilt.  One thing is for sure, justice was done.

When Tom was hung, he was allowed to have a person of his choice stand next to him.  He chose T. Joe Cahill, the Laramie County clerk, a young manin his 20's.  The last words spoken by Tom were to T.Joe.

As a young stock boy, clerk and delivery boy, working at Hoy's Drug and Dairy in Cheyenne, I had an opportunity to meet most of the customers.  I even delivered prescriptions to people who were not able to get to the store.  I also delivered groceries.  I will never forget the elderly gentleman that everybody loved.  That friendly man was T. Joe.  T.Joe Cahill died in Cheyenne, Wyoming in 1968.

Tom is buried next to his brother in the Columbine Cemetery here in Boulder.  Twice a year I put flowers on his grave.  Every Memorial Day and every Veterans Day there is a small American flag next to his head stone.

My connection

The Grand Teton, Jackson Hole Wyoming, just north of Burnt Lake.

Man has always been a social animal.  Early man first lived a hunters/gathers.  Early in mans history, we lived in family groups known as clan or tribes.  As the population in Europe grew, people began to live in towns and cities.  The occupations of the inhabitants became more specialized.  In what is now the US, the inhabitants remained as hunter/gathers and continued to live in tribes.  When the Europeans started to spread to the new world, they brought with them disease and technology (and their attitudes about owning the land).  They tried to live in harmony with the natives.  When the Europeans found themselves in need of more land, it was inenvitable that the two groups would collide.  When two societies collide, the one with the most technical weapons is usually the victor, sometimes totally eliminating the losing society. It should also be noted that more American natives died of the diseases spread by the Europeans than anything else.  How could this affect our mother earth?

I have over the years developed an attitude.  An attitude about the way we are treating our mother, the very planet that gives us all we need to sustain life.  I have compared my thoughts and ideas with that of many native Americans and you know what?  I agree with them.  We belong to the earth, it does not belong to us.  I attribute my beliefs to my personal history and the education I continue to obtain.

I am a rare breed, I was born and raised in Wyoming.  I didn't realize how rare I was until I had a good friend attend the FBI academy.  He pointed out to me that in the big picture, hardly anybody lives in Wyoming, something he learned in the academy.  I was lucky enough to be exposed to much of the American west before industry and people began to pollute the area.

As a very young man, I would go camping and fishing in the mountains of central Wyoming with my father.  We would go into areas that were only accessible by 4 wheel drive vehicles.  These were areas that showed no sign that man had ever been there before us. (although we knew better....it was expected that we left no trace that we had been there ourselves)  I have been fishing on a lake that had water so clear, youcould see the bottom, 30' below us. We could go out for a week and take only the required pans, a little cooking oil, and some corn meal or flour and have enough native fish to sustain us.

I have stood on the prairie, once populated by the Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians, the buffalo and the eagle, with the wind in my face, the smell of the sage brush filling the air, listening to the leaves of the Cottonwood  and the Meadowlark sing.  One cold winter night in the 1960's, I found myself standing on the frozen prairie.  The temperature was below zero, there was 6" to 8" of snow on the ground and the air was perfectly still.  I looked into the sky and saw a million stars.  I felt so small, but yet a part of the universe.  There was nothing around me that I could buy, but yet I felt as if I owned it all, or it owned me.

Just a few years earlier, as I lay in my sleeping bag in our backyard in Cheyenne, I was nine years old.  I watched the stars above.  One of them moved.  just weeks before, the USSR had launched Sputnik.  It was the only moving object in the heavens.  Now there are so many, they pass over, one every 3-5 minutes.  I often wonder what the few remaining tribes think of the moving stars.

Man and our over population are "killing Mother Earth".  Our skies are so polluted that many people can only see a few stars on a clear night.  Roads have been built and the  once clean lakes are cloudy and surrounded by litter.  I have a friend who works at NCAR/UCAR.  She sends me information, almost daily, on the research on global warming.  I have seen the numbers.  We are heating up the earth.  We need to wake up and take care of the problem.

I often reflect on a drive I took just after my father died.  I was driving south on I-25 from the Wyoming/Colorado border.  As I looked at the front range of the Rockies, I thought "Those beautiful mountains were here a long time before me, my father and his father.  They are owned only by God"

I have but one solace...When I start feeling that my world is becoming over populated, I take a drive back to Wyoming.  There are still more Pronghorn Antelope than people.  I just wish the State of Wyoming had not improved the road back to Burnt Lake, where I use to camp and fish with my father.

Busy weekend in Sunshine

The garage sale

Merchandise for the garage sale

We had a very busy weekend in Sunshine.  On Saturday there were two events going on.  Saturday was the community wide garage sale.  So many people helped.  Mary organized and was in charge of the event.  Beth and MaryAnn worked for three + days on the event.  Their expertise was very valuable.  The room was well organized and MaryAnn should get an award for add-on sales.  If an item was marked a dollar, she would charge 75 cents and send you back to find an item that sold for 25 cents.  She moved a bunch of stuff!  We set up the garage sale in Station #1.  Although the rebuild after the fire is not yet complete, we were able to use the structure. 

stuff, stuff and more stuff

Merchandise was brought in Thursdaynight and all day Friday.  The sale began just before 9AM Saturday morning.  I started the day by purchasing a shot glass for my collection.  Things wound down by 4PM.  We raised about 1/5th the amount we need for the electrical hook-up.

 

The Arts and Craft Fair

Inside the school house

The Annual Sunshine Arts and Craft Fair was also very successful.  This is an annual event used to raise money for the upkeep of the school house and cemetery.  the event runs for two days, usually the 3rd weekend in September.  There were people in attendance the whole time the doors were open.  June was there, selling her book, Stories of Sunshine, a great book about the history of our little community.  We had other vendors selling jewelry, stationary, Christmas ornaments, soap, artwork, gold ore samples (from a local mine) and, of course, cakes and cookies.  We shut down around 4PM on Sunday.  Each year the sales increase.  This was our 14th year.

 

June selling her book about Sunshine, Colorado

 

Shoppers

I guess I should explain what happened and why we are trying to raise money for the electrical hook-up.  Although separate, the fire department and the school house / cemetery association have always worked closely together.  The School was build in 1900.  It originally had a wood burning stove but no electricity.  Sometime in the recent past, some neighbors ran an electrical connection from the firehouse (station #1) to the school house.  Lights and an outlet were installed.  Although not up to code (the cable was attached to live trees) it worked well.  That is until the heater in station #1 caught on fire and burnt the building to the ground.  the power company, when responding to the fire, disconnecting the hook-up to both the fire station and the school house.  We would like to re-connect the electrical hook up and have it be to code.

Without the electrical hook-up, we have heat but no lights in the school house.  With this configuration, the school house can only be used during day light hours.  In the past, the Halloween party, new Years celebration and other event have been held there, many at night.  We are now relying on private homes instead of our community center.  For the craft fair, we ran a rather long extension cord from the contractors hook-up to the school house.  It worked but I don't know how safe it was.

Community Fest 2007

Food, Food, Food!!!

The Community Fest fund raiser for the fire department was very successful.  The weather was beautiful.

Silent auction items

We began serving Food, Beer and soft drinks around 2PM.  There was a silent auction with lots of great items on display.  The live auction was rather interesting.  It usually includes cakes and pies baked by local neighbors.  There are usually a couple of "odd" items.  This year the "odd" items were a truck load of firewood, and a 1969 Ford Mustang convertible.  Hildegard still holds the record for the cake that brought in the highest bid, $1000 two years ago.  This year, although it didn't bring in quite as much, she still baked the winner. 

Next on the Sunshine agenda is the garage sale at firehouse #1 next Saturday and the annual Sunshine Arts & Craft fair at the schoolhouse.

I have been struggling with my desire to write any more.  I've shared most of my stories and quite frankly, don't have much more I want to say.  I have only one story about my connection to the old west but I have hesitated writing it.  It's about Tom Horn, Geronimo and my association with the man that stood next to Tom when he was hung, T Joe Cahill (the last hanging in Cheyenne in 1903).  I hesitate because I am very sensitive to the manner in which the American natives were murdered and forced to surrender to the army.  To this day, I believe man belongs to the land, the land does not belong to man.  I don't want to offend any of those who still read my entries by telling the story. 

I want to thank you for hanging in there with me.  I'm sure I will add a few more entries as the mood strikes me......as for now Milo and I will continue to walk everyday (as long as I am able), wave to Bob the bus driver and raise the flag.  (I hope some will continue to raise the flag after I'm gone)  I will try to add items that pertain to Sunshine and the things going on in the community.  I still want to keep our neighbors that have left up to date on "things going on in sunshine".

Please give your family all the love you can and watch out for the bears.