Well, the lights outside are turned off, have been for a while now. I miss them. I don’t know this little boy, but I have read his story and his mother’s words and I keep thinking of him. Last year, this time, I didn’t know Thomas existed; I don’t know how I came to his site. But come I did and, now, extraordinarily, I feel I must keep something lit.
I have Thomas’ lamp now: a brass stand and an amber light in the old north porch window. And it shines.
The sign at the bank at the turn to the hospital on Sawyer said it was 14? this morning sometime between 6:15 and 6:30. It was cold enough that frost formed inside the little green car and on the rearview mirror. (When I was a little girl, my ears heard “review” mirror, as in review where you have been. Made sense then. Heck, it makes sense now . . . unless you are backing up – so never mind.) Back home, I decided it as time to have a fire because it was . . . yes, cold. Wood outside on a pile is very cold, too, especially if you are not wearing gloves.
Now, at 8:21 am, I am sitting in front of said fire, but with shoes on. I think shoes, especially heavy ones that have been out in the cold, can get in the way of fully enjoying a fire. Actually, it’s a bit like having cement “L’s” on your feet.
CLUNK ……. CLUNK. That would be the sound of my shoes dropping to the floor if it were not carpeted. As it is, the sound is more of a THUNK. Freed from being encased in what felt like solid blocks of concrete, my toes stretch out toward the heat. Ahhhhh. Yes.
Oh, we need more wood . . . Should have thought of that before “thunking”. *
* to thunk: to let one’s shoes fall from feet to a carpeted floor; past tense of to think in some circles.
WAIT!! The word sun* was in the title of this post, so, yes, sun is predicted for a good part of the day.
* sun: object in sky rarely seen this winter in Northern Indiana.
Yes, I am. I am sitting here looking at the fire I built. Can’t you just feel the warmth! Oh, five inch penalty for taunting – I have to move back five inches. Damn refs.
Well, I suppose that’s all right since they say a neatly kept house is the sign of convention-bound, dull person. Or is it a lazy one. Hmmm . . .
When I’m out on the porch and look down at the floor in front of where I am sitting, I see this needlepoint footstool. Gotta love the cow. I picked this up at a Goodwill store; it was a real nice fine – made my day.
In fact, I hate to put my feet on it , but in the end, I do; the cow doesn’t mind and it makes balancing my laptop much easier.
Oh, speaking of laptops, Apple just introduced the Airbook . . . for about $1,800. ACK!!!Oh, speaking of laptops, Apple just introduced the Airbook . . . for about $1,800. ACK!!!
After checking out some information on the South Fork Dam that gave way and flooded Johnstown, Pa. in 1889, I started thinking about the St. Francis Dam – although I couldn’t remember it’s name and had to look it up by referencing Mulholland. It collapsed in a spectacular and deadly fashion two years after the 1926 dedication and released a 2.8 mile long lake which roared toward the ocean. At this site, pdf files can be opened to look at the reports about and impact of the dam collapse. One pdf discusses reassessment of the dam failure and includes this photograph:
This is not a surprise; it is happened before – several times in my life, actually. It was cold out in the diesel at 6 am, getting it started and defrosted for a trip to take my daughter-in-law to work. But I didn’t mind it so much – the little glow plug light was orange and then went out and when I turned the key, the engine responded with a healthy chug, chug, chug. There was no doubt about it, no thought of deciding, “Oh, heck, AmeliaJake, it’s too cold for me to do this . . . I’m just going to stop all this foolishness and let my parts rest.” But it was steadfast, doing its job. Oh, Little Green Car, I love you.
This is a decoy that my father-in-law, William A. Vance jr. gave me one year because he knew I liked rustic things with a history. He found it in a shed or barn or basement or whatever located on his property on the Mississippi River, just south of Nauvoo, the place from which the Mormons left to go to Salt Lake City. Joseph Smith, the religion’s founder, was hung there, mob-fashion, and the rest decided it was best to head out.
I think there are some things that break you heart so completely that nothing else ever seems to phase you; but that which broke your heart is still capable of coming back and devastating you all over again, despite the years that have passed.
UPDATE May 14, 2009: Noticing that people have come to this post recently following a Google search for “Mike Schatzlein blog,” I checked his blog site and found it is no more. I had not looked at the site for quite a while since he seldom updated and I guess now, he’s not going to.
Well, you start something and it’s kind of fun and then you think, “Oh, I don’t know, do I really want to do this? Can I really say what I want to say . . . remember, it has to be in my corporate voice.”
Mike Schatzlein, CEO of Dupont Hospital down on, yes, Dupont Road in Fort Wayne began to blog recently. I stumbled across his first couple of entries when I was researching CarePages at Dupont and left a comment that I thought it was great he was blogging, or something along that line. I interviewed Dr. Schatzlein way back before Dupont opened and even got a nice tour of the building, which explains why I actually took notice of his blog in the first place.
I can still remember sitting in his temporary office talking about the hospital and I remember the PR people hurrying over to sit in on the interview. (Say, he was supposed to invite me to the opening, but I never received an invitation. Shoot! Think he forgot? Maybe he didn’t like the finished article. Hey, I thought it was pretty good and complimentary. Okay, let me step back from the emotion.) I enjoyed learning about Dupont’s aims and talking to Dr. Schatzlein about his career and change of focus from the practice of medicine to administration.
He first used the Jarvik 7 in Fort Wayne. (I THINK that’s what he told me.) Now he has written a post about Robert Jarvik and his commercial endorsement of Lipitor, which Mike and I both take – he says rather than cholesterol his primary reason is more because of “its mystical life-prolonging and mood-enhancing effects”. I started taking it for my cholesterol, learned about the possible connection with overall lifespan benefits, but did not realize it was supposed to help my mood. If it does, maybe I have a really, really grumpy baseline. Or, perhaps, he means for it to be interpreted to mean a heightening of moods, i.e. better rages, funkier tantrums, more powerful pouting?
On with it. So I saw the Jarvik post today – but it was written/published on December 6, 2007; it was his 8th post. The next two posts were on the 16th of that month and the next and last post was on January 6, 2008. I read through all his posts and, my gosh, Evan Bayh’s wife got $700,000 for serving on Anthem’s Board? Ack! that is a lot of money. Sorry for that little diversion, my comment was going to be that he refers to having basically two readers in his second December 16 post, which talks about the frequency of his posting. He said he thought it would be weekly; daily wouldn’t work. He figured it would be like a Sunday column and he told a nice little story about playing church basketball in 5th & 6th grade. I liked that. He didn’t post again until January 6th. Of course, I hadn’t checked in during this entire time, although I had thought about it. The thing was I had gotten caught up in a few of theCarePage stories.
I wonder . . . He writes very well and is, of course, very intelligent – did you know he fools around with computer innards, kind of like a surgeon? – so does he feel that he can’t be himself in the blog, has to watch what he says. Heck, that would be a burden. Maybe he didn’t think the blog thing through; I don’t know.
What I do know is I would like to hear more of his opinions – because he’s no dim bulb – and more of his personal stories – because I just plain out like that type of thing.
More accurately, I should ask: Remember hearing about the Johnstown Flood of 1889? I have always thought it a compelling story, but over the years, I have come to be most fascinated not by the mass of water that barreled down the valley, but by the dry lake left behind. This morning while doing a little history researching type of thing, I found a a site where an apparent railroad buff had posted pictures of trains in Pennsylvania. Down at the bottom of the page was this picture.
Photographer: Tony Kimmel
Location: South Fork, PA
Date: October 21, 2007
Description: Three blue 80MACs bring a train northbound through the former lake Conemaugh.
So, the resort homes would have been along the treeline and that low-lying grizzled area is the original lake bed, which, of course, was previously an original low-lying grizzled area.
Go HERE to get information concerning David McCullough’s book about the flood. Click HERE to see photos from the Library of Congress.
