Because it is a Leap Year, today, the 20th, is the summer solstice – the longest day of the year. Normally, of course, it is the 21st. I love the time when the days are getting longer, partly, I think, because it is June and the earth is not so hot in June that the nights don’t turn into hot dawns. June dawns are usually cool and the sky a fresh blue. You get up . . . and the whole day is stretching before you.

But today isn’t really one of my favorite days because my personality is already mourning the end of the trend to more and more light. June 1st is an uplifting day because I have three entire weeks to wake up with the knowledge that each dawn with come earlier.

I feel this way about Christmas. My favorite days of the season are the four or five days right before. Although I do find it really irritating to walk into Wal-Mart at that time and see all the Christmas stuff cleared out and the Valentine garish red going up. Christmas red is merry, in case you are wondering.

Today is a sad day this year, though. Our neighbor who had a stroke last year and worked so hard to get better is growing increasingly confused. Usually it would happen with a urinary tract infection that would affect his mind, but then as the antibiotics cleared the infection, so would his thinking improve. This time the infection spread and he was hospitalized . . . and this time his mind hasn’t returned to its usual state. Yesterday, he was even gruff with the nurses and that is not him at all. He will be 95 come July 21st.

His wife is now going to the nursing home to be with him; we didn’t think she would be going this soon, but she didn’t want to spend another winter alone in her house and once the ball started rolling, it took off. She may actually go today. Chances are she will go this week-end. She was 91 this March.

Well, families decide what they want to do . . . or what some of them want to do.

We were going to do a bit of fence painting, my granddaughter and I, but the sky has threatened showers on and off and now when it looks a little clearer, we see our goal a little less clearly. I think we see it, oh, somewhere in tomorrow.

Tomorrow I have to go to Ligonier to talk with a man about mini sprint racing. I know nothing about it and will do some homework at this website he gave me. The radio museum is there and I think I’ll stop by again, take some pictures and throw them into an album for my husband. Ah, pictures and my husband – I have been trying to get him to move from his low pixel camera onto more resolution. He has been balking, but today he wanted to put the picture of Sydney at the fairground in the light mist of fog on his monitor, but it didn’t have enough pixels and he had to use the tile format.

Der Bingle, you must have him uppixel. Our problem is we need cameras with optical viewfinders and Olympus has dropped them from a lot of their point and shoots. And so have a lot of other camera makers . . . but let’s see:

Canon PowerShot A720 IS

Highs
Very good image quality, next-shot delay and dynamic range. Long 6x optical zoom. Versatile. Reasonably priced. Includes optical viewfinder, manual controls and manual focus.

Lows
Camera design places flash too close to where you hold the camera, possibly obstructing the strobe. Batteries may fall out of camera when changing memory card. (Duct tape, Bing.)

Bottom Line
This moderately priced PowerShot offers many shooting options, such as manual and exposure controls, plus practical features, such as an optical viewfinder, which can be helpful in composing in bright light situations. For such an inexpensive point-and-shoot, it was a very versatile camera that could zoom optically while recording video. It also had very good next shot delay.

OR the A590IS model at Best Buy on sale. It has a 4x optical zoom. The one above is supposed to be about $180.

Sometimes I feel more like myself than others. I am not sure that makes sense . . . so who am at at these other times? I don’t know, perhaps a shadow. Right now, I feel as all these moments are gifts, potential positive goals and I will actual work with the moments and toward the goals.  I like to feel like this . . . which, could be I realize, delusional.

I’m crushing ice, mixing my soft drinks and enjoying this.

I suppose I’ll report when it passes.

I wrote just recently that Optimus – sold by Radio Shack – had discontinued making the inexpensive amplifying devices to help the hard of hearing. Today something told me to go into the store – the store that no longer had a product the Internet said was no longer made. (Oh, yeah, there are companies that are making them for $179 and up.) But, look, they had them – they just don’t say Optimus anymore; they say Radio Shack.

I got one and we’re going to see if it helps Mr. Feller hear people better.

I’m going to get one to have for Mother; they are great in the car, in crowds, so many places. Woo-Hoo!! Yes, I am really happy about this. Now I don’t know if they help you hear TV better, or sermons better – if they have a lot of static in such situations or not. But I know they let two people communicate . . . and that is really nice.

I had the pleasure of meeting with Mr. Krull when he was named Citizen of the Year. He was a fine gentleman.
A Rome City resident since the summer of 1930, a long-time Lions Club member, an active church member and a family-oriented man, Gerhard Krull is being honored for his years of dedication to his community. As Citizen of the Year, he will serve as Grand Marshal of Chautauqua Days in August.

He worked for over four decades at one place – Kneipp Springs – and he has been retired for 27 years now. Well . . . retired just means he no longer has a formal job. Trim and fit at 92, he is a gentleman who bridges both the old and new worlds – literally and figuratively.

He was born in Germany, got his secondary education there, and then came to the United States in 1930 as a very young adult. In his career as farm manager at Kneipp Springs, he was always alert to new developments in agriculture, taking a course in veterinary science in Chicago and working with professors at Purdue University.

One of his projects has been to compile a scrapbook of his life, here and in Germany. One day, it occurred to him that he had one scrapbook, but six kids. So he had copies made and the man who did the work looked at him when he came to pick them up and said, “Mr. Krull, you sure had an interesting life.”

Gerhard Krull laughs as he tells the story, eyes twinkling. His memories come easily from him for he is a friendly, candid man, recalling humorous incidents – such as first meeting his wife, Eileen, while delivering sweet potatoes – with ready laughter . . . and later telling of his wife’s smile shortly before her passing with a catch in his throat.

He says, “We had 57 wonderful years together . . . and that smile is always with me.” Continue reading Gerhard Krull: 1909-2008 →

Yes, my brother-in-law is employed by the University of Iowa and lives in North Liberty and he is flooded out of work, but not out of home. I would ask him to be my flood correspondent but I fear the report would have to read beep* bleep* bleep* bleep* bleep* bleep* bleep* bleep* bleep*ing and so forth.

In the last big flood – the one of ’93 – my father-in-law, who lived in Illinois but worked in Keokuk, Iowa could only reach his office by riding a “dug out of mothballs” trolley across the top of the dam, climbing down one ladder to the bottom of the lock and climbing up another to get out on the other side.

Ah, and the summer my husband flew off to report for duty in Guam, his dad had to take him to a little tiny airport to get a tiny plane to take him to an airport with bigger planes. If I remember correctly, we would go down to the water-caressed bridge that crossed from Iowa into Missouri and murmur “ah . . . . oooh”.

I’m at odds with myself today, so guess I’ll see if I can even out.

Here’s a forgotten garage on Sylvan Lake in Rome City. It’s a dammed lake, created as a feeder for a now defunct canal. One year the embankment showed weakness and the water level had to be lowered; it stayed that way for a couple of years.

Say, look, there’s a chimney . . . and maybe a story there. A chimney on a garage?  Maybe it doubled as a getaway.

Well, I had not realized this although all day yesterday I knew it was the 12th and a Thursday. I wonder if Tim Russert thought about it when he got up this morning. I’m sorry; that thought just popped into my head when I clicked on the news and saw he had died.