Shane’s on the left; Anya is on the right. When my son told me they had named Shane what they did, I immediately thought of Alan Ladd in the role of Shane. Ladd was only about 5’4″ and had to stand on a box when close to his leading ladies – or they had to stand in a trench. Now, it looks as if Anya may turn out to be taller than Shane.

Well, I was just thinking about virtual travel, an by corollary, being a virtual tourist. So I picked a spot on the map while closing my eyes. It was Vermont and I pulled up the state map and selected an area and zoomed in until the town Bellows Falls caught my eye. So I decided to look around, not so much for the facts you can pull up in three seconds in a Google search, but in little tidbits of Bellows Falls connections.

Governor Thomas Salmon (1973-77) came to Bellows Falls and practiced law after his days as Governor and University President. His one time personal residence is for sale. I have linked to a page that shows the wallpaper that is in the house now. It’s not my taste, but you can see it here. I then looked at Wikipedia and found this picture:

But here’s an interesting fact: HIs son, Thomas M., was elected State Auditor in 2006. After the first vote count, he trailed by 137. He asked for a re-count and was 102 votes over his opponent, incumbent Randolph Brock. Never before had a Vermont state-wide election result been changed by a re-count. Kind of ironic that the election was for auditor. Thomas M., by the way, is a CPA.

If I am ever in Bellows Falls, I think I would at least stop in here.

I found the above photo at Flickr; it was taken by Sunset Sailor.

I wrote before about how my younger son and I named the bears I had begun collecting because it was so hard to believe anything as cute as they were could only be material and stuffing. This is Gopher; we are certain of this because we put their names on their butts.

I heard or read somewhere – or maybe a little bird whispered it in my ear – that a little boy named Otto who lives in Texas has a birthday TODAY. Now, I know he has his picture on his grandma’s website, and that’s pretty special . . . but if you listen really hard, Otto, maybe you will hear shouts of “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” coming all the way from Indiana.

Mother is a reader and today it is the Druids and now we are talking about them – the yule log, the use of garland, the holly and the idea that you you could do what she wanted to do as long as other people were not hurt. Did I say we were talking? Well, actually Mother is going a mile a minute, about the Druids and about the Amish lady who turned English and married a man who turned out to have a drug problem. Now she is on to the cat that has been allowed in, falls asleep on Mother’s stomach as she lies down and reads and jumps off when the ringing of my phone call disturbs her. Except tonight the cat has stayed put.

Speaking of cats, we caught a mouse today and Mother wanted to know why I didn’t put it in a sandwich bag and freeze it for her cat. Well, gee, Mother, can’t that cat of yours do anything? Oops, the last time we poked fun of the cat, she (the cat) put a curse on me and I got sick and I don’t think Sydney was feeling well, either.

For years, Mother was never a cat person and now she has a cat shrine where Lucy Lib, the first cat she took in, was buried. Tippy’s final resting place will be there also. Poor Tippy, probably some antifreeze from the place down the road – the house that used to be Homer’s but he sold when he moved to Kentucky. We are training Sydney to not “visit” the bushes at the Lucy Lib Memorial Garden.

Right now, it is not the evening I started this post; it is the morning after. Cameron has left to walk to school, but not until after a little Q & A session about a point of history. I have drilled it into his head that when I say, “I don’t know,” that is exactly what I mean; I do not mean, “Ask me some more questions in detail and maybe I will suddenly know the answers.”

Maybe I’ll tell him to call his great-grandmother and ask about the  Stonehenge/Druid situation.