Snow Rainbow

Snow Rainbow at 7:15 in the morning

For the first time in my life, this morning I saw a snow rainbow.  We often have times when it snows in the mountains and the sky is clear over the plains.  With the sun rising in the clear, eastern sky, the light shines on the falling snow in the mountains.  The result is a rainbow created by the light reflecting on the ice crystals in the snow.  I just had to share. 

The holidays were very enjoyable.  Janice had the week off.  While I was working on Saturday, she drug out the indoor Christmas decorations and dressed the house in holiday fair.  We had Thanksgiving dinner at Janice's cousin's house.  This is an annual event that has been going on for many, many years.  Her cousin, Richard, is a Mason.  He serves as a speaker at funerals when a fellow Mason passes on.  He is asked to represent that organization several times a week.  Richard told us that he is notified of the funerals by the secretary and very seldom hears from the head of the group.  Last week the secretary was out of town and the head of the local organization had to call and notify him of a funeral.  Richard was not available to take the call, which required him to place a return call.  When he called, a very surprised woman answered the phone.  She said her husband's caller ID did not say "Richard"....it said "Someone died".  They had a good chuckle over that one.

Sunday morning we took a walk.  We met up with some of the neighborhood girls.

Have a good week.

God bless you all.

David

 

Happy Thanksgiving

Greetings to all.  Milo and I would like to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving.  We hope all of our friends take a moment and say thanks for all the blessings that surround us each and every day.

Work has resumed on the Sunshine Fire Station #1.  After sitting near completion since early spring, Boulder County has decided to allow construction to continue.  The issue was the size of the pipe leading from the bathroom to the septic tank.  When originally build, a 2" pipe was used.  The new code requires a 3" pipe.  They also required the construction of a leach field.  All of this for a building that is actually used for about 48 hours a year.  They have to dig a trench from the fire house, across the road and into a new septic tank.  The funny thing is, now it is near the end of November, the ground is frozen.  The county couldn't make this decision while it was easy to dig and refill the ground around the building.  Anyway, here are a couple of photos.

We are hoping the building can be completed by the 1st of the year.

 

We have been experiencing the 2nd warmest November in Colorado History.  That event has come to a screeching halt tonight.  It was in the 60's during the Bronco's football game on Monday night.  Tonight it is 23 degrees and snowing.  Thank you Lord for the moisture.

Remember what Robert Benchley said.  A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.

Be of good cheer,

David

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.