The FFFF 2013

We just finished celebrating our family reunion on Saturday June 8. at Andrea and Travis's house. There were 54 or 55 people there. As usual it was a beautiful day lots of sunshine and warm breezie air.No matter  where you sit you have a beautiful view when you are outside the house. They have a lovely backporch/deck on the back side of the house. The pool is visible from there. The pool apron has umbrella tables and chairs around it and a grill on the back side of the apron. On the side of the house there is an entrance to the lower floor and it also has a cement aapron with another umbrella table. It over looks the lake. It is a beautiful pasdtoral scene.

There were a few people that were not there. Pauila,Brett , Courtney and Al and their kids and a few more.  We missed them but we all had a wonderful time. Jeanine and son Jack came from Denver, Pat, Kristie and Alex came from North Carolina, Keith, Angela, bridget and Conor came from Sarasota, FL.Carrie, Gabe and Beni came from Seattle, WA.

Forty Years of Bliss

During forty years of my adult life, I was lucky enough to have a job that I loved. I frequently said that I never woke up in the morning and regretted the fact that I had to go to school.(work).

I loved the children that I worked with. I will share with you some of the humorous things they did and said. I preserved hundreds of these witticisms. In many cases their remarks reflect the characrteristic of their 'problem'.

We spent a great amount of time trying to fill in the gaps in their knowledge. For example," Who can name the four directions?" The first answer the teacher got was, "Stop, go, walk, and don't walk."Another answered ,"Left, right, up and down".
"Would you believe North, South, East , West?"  Oh, yeah.

Today's Day

There is a subject that is causing a lot of discussion now adays. Some scientists are sure that we are in the midst of Global warming and other people are sure that the drastic weather changes are cyclical. The Polar ice cap is melting, the polar bears are losing their homes because of the melting ice. Our weather patterns have totally changed. We will have two or three days of weather in the fifties and then have one in the eighties. We are all struggling to adapt to this on again, off again weather,but it is something we have to deal with.

I am quite bewildered about the fact that the polititians have stuck their noses in to the discussion. One party is sure it is just cyclical. They are full of statements like,"My grandpa remembers when it snowed in May one year!" "What about the years of drought when we had no rain for months and months?" Other examples of weather aberations are plentiful but somethings happening today have never been arround before.

Just yesterday a wave of solid ice came crashing into shore in the northeast. It distroyed many houses and did millions of dollars worth of damage to that area. I saw films of it and it looked just like a wall of sea water coming in but it was ice. Many other phenominal events have taken place in recent years that are not cyclical.

Scientists are blaming fossil fuels on the changes in the weather. Plastic ,plastic everything is causing  so much damage. We really need to get serious about recycling. The Indians worked hard at saving the earth and we 're going to have to live a little more like they did to save our world. Ciao

The Champions

1On Easter Sunday the University of Louisville Cardinals played the University of Duke Blue Devils. We had dinner early so that we could devote every minute of our time wataching the game.Two excellent coaches and two excellent teams.The teams seemed to be well matched. They would take the lead then we would take it. It was definitely a nail biter.Suddenly I looked down for some reason or other and when I looked back up there were Cardinals scattered on the floor. My first thought was that we had been victims of a shooting but everyone was shouting, "What happened, what happened?"  It took the anouncers a few minitues to see what was happening and telling us what was going on. One of our players had jumped up to block a shot and came down on his leg so hard that he broke the tibia, About six inches of bone had come through the skin on his leg. It was such a dreadful sight that his fellow team mates fell to the floor on their knees in tears Some  team menbers vomited because of the shock. Coach Patino was crying and the team members all gathered in a huddle and cried. One player, Luike Hancock knelt beside his fallen team mate and patted hhis chest as he led them in prayer. The arena was dead silent until the gurney came and  the medics lifted Kevin (Ware)onto it and wheeled him away. The team had continued to huddle in grief with Kevin's words echoing around them..

"I'll be OK just win the game."

They did  just that! They continued to play well enough to win the game against Michigan on Monday night.They have proven themselves to be humble and kind to one another. They are a good example for all the athletes coming up behind them. We have needed good, clean well spoken young men as examples for the youth for sometime.

We can all be proud of them. I hope they will continue to be good examples from now on.Hail to the Champions!!!!Ciao

Is There Life After Basketball?

I love basketball, despite the fact that I have never been able to throw the ball through the hoop! I have tried many, many times but I fail everytime. Either the ball is too heavy, or the rim is too high or the fact that I can only jump one inch off the ground, when standing still. Any one of these things or a combination of all of them prevent me from shooting a basket! I could do better at football than basketball.

However! I love basketball! I took every opportunity to watch the game whenever I could. When we lived in Ohio, we lived within walking distance of Wittenberg Univ. and they had a good team. The school was very small and it was easy to get tickets.  Ohio is more known for its football but we could watch our share of basketball since we were so close to the school.

There are not nearly as many hoops nailed to garage doors in Ohio as there are in Kentucky. Still there were enough that the sound of the basket ball hitting the cement was very recognnizable. (It sounded like my heart beating.)Maybe that's why I love the game.In the fall of the year I listen for the familiar sound as the kids walk back and forth to school, bouncing  the ball. Grade school, Jr. high and high school, YMCAs and other organizations have teams. If a child happens to be taller than his classmates, he's frequently asked, "Do you play basketball.?" We had a very attractive girl in our eighth grade class one year, she was at least five foot ten and she hated to be asked that question. "Do you play basketball?"  She finally came up with the perfect answer,"No!", she would say, "Do you play miniture golf?"

Most colleges have teams and they belong to different leagues. The Big Ten, The Big East, etc. then at the end of the season The NCAA chooses the top teams in the country to play for the championship.There is also another group that chooses teams that are good but not quite as good as the NCAA teams. NIT, national invitational tournament.

March Madness this year is especially interesting for us because the Louisville Cardinals were the No. 1 pick and have worked their way up to the top rung of the ladder. Tonight they will be playing Michigan and which ever one wins will be the Champions. Our fingers are crossed, eyes, also. I'm going to say Ciao right now because I don't want to jinx them. GO CARDS

I Wonder

I consider reading the news paper each day as one of my favorite things to do.  Unfortionately, it is not nearly as inspiring or entertaining as it used to be when our paper was owned by the Bingham family but we have to do with it as is. I hurry through the first few pages of the main news section to get to the Forum or Op-ed part of the paper. I like to view the political cartoons.  I often find them to be very good and even humerous at times but I also find them to be vitriolic and insulting. Then I read the letters to the editor.Some of the letters are worth reading and I often wish that I could converse with the writer. But then others are insulting, poorly written, ignorant and with out merit.

Have you ever noticed how many cartoons, letters to the editor and news articles are about the Catholic Church, or clergy? The new Pope provided a new field of negative writings. Within an hour of the announcement, the cartoons and articles were up and going after him. The news people already knew what his philosophy is and how he will govern the Church. They feel free to put a negative slant on what he says and what he believes. I think we should give him a chance to speak for himself.

I wonder what would happen if we slung as many barbs at some of the other religions as are slung at the Catholic Church and its people. How would it go over. ? What about the Mormons, or the Church of the Latter Day Saints? We can all recall some news person or public figure gettting fired for insulting remarks about the Jews or another person of faith.

People have been fired for saying things about the homosexual community or the African American community but say something about the Catholic Church and its OK to pile on! I wonder..........Ciao

Pondering the Imponderables

Since there is not much to talk abou for me in my future I must dwell on the past. I have many things that are unexplained.: Many things that I must wonder about, and ponder.  My Grandmother was a very wise woman and was very quick to speak her mind. "Speak up!" She would urge us as we sat around the dining room table. She was quick to let her feelings be heard but she was willing to listen to your side. When one of my children was diagnosed as having an alergy to milk, she at first phoo phooed the idea but she did not drop it and move on, she wanted dialogue with all of us to get to the bottom of it. She questioned why one member of the family could be allergic while none of the others were.She had never heard the word "allergy". What did it mean, how did it come aboout? We finally did come to some agreement about the word. We all knew that we suffered stomach discomfort when we ate certain foods. People would say that certain foods disagreed with them. Could these be allergens? We just 'stayed away 'from those foods.

We were aware of environmentally triggered allergies. We lived in Ohio where there was a lot of farm land. Every year when it was time to harvest the grains that had been planted people suffered with "hay fever." Perhaps it was termed an allergy in the medical books but the common term for it was 'hey fever'.Again, why did certain people get hey fever while others breathed the same air and nary a sneeze out of them?

    We  have to wonder if all of the radio waves flowing through the air around us cotain some thing that causes us to react to them. Before electricity was invented did we have these problems? It took quite a few years for electricity to be wide spread, and it took quite a few years for allergies to become more and more prevalent. X-rays that could see through body tissue and bones was discovered.

We can now study the brain, the heart and all other parts of the human body with sophistocated testing implements and machines. Think of the effect those machines must have on us. I've had a multitude of scans and every time I see those big machines that my body is going to be exposed to, I cannot help but wonder in what way I'll be affected.

Years ago Autism was hardly ever heard of but now it is so common. They did a study to see if the encrease in autistic kids was caused by the immunation injections that  the children were receiving and they finally agreed that the shots were not the cause. What is?

Is there still residue left from the Atomic bombs that were dropped over Hiroshima floating around in the air messing with our genes?

I guess I  must continue to ponder! Ciao

How to Make a Person

A few years aago Hillary Clinton wrote a book and entitled it "It takes a Village" I bought the book at a book signing event at Books a Million. There were protesters  across the street from the store carrying signs and posters and shouting disparaging remarks about Hillary.They pretty much showed their lack of upbringing and would have benefitted from the book if they had read it. It is a pretty little book and one that I am proud to have on my book shelves.The book 's purpose is to make us aware of the fact that children don't come with instructors manuals. We are pretty much on our own to care and feed them.

The world that I grew up in was not at all like it is today. For one thing there used to be lots of unmarried people in the families of yester year. I for example had three single aunts and two single uncles. I also had two sets of grandparents. All of whom had a hand in my upbringing! We also lived in neighborhoods that interacted with each other and they accepted the responsibility of setting good examples for us to follow.

As we played and moved about in our small world, we felt secure because we knew that the adults would see to it that we behaved and abided by the rules that were established in our community.

As I mentioned above, I hd three single Aunts. Two of them were Mother' s sisters and one was Dad's sister. Dad was the oldest in his family  and his baby sister did not marry until really late in life. She was only 9 years older than my oldest brother , Joe. She was more like a big sister to all of us.(My two brothers and one sister). She was a lot of fun and took us on her dates and  taught us all of the latest songs, "Ja Da, Ja,Da Jada,Jada Jing Jing,Jing She loved us but we had to toe the mark with her! No foolishness and questions. if she said No, we said OK.Aunt Mary Louise was her name. She was Dad's sister. I always wanted her dimples! She was a "flapper":She could dance the Charleston and taught us songs like ,:"It Ain't Gonna Rain no More, No More".All of her  friends loved us too. One of the guy's that she daterd had a car with a rumble seat. My sister Mart and I got to ride in the rumble seat when we went with Aunt Mary Louise. It was so much fun.The two unmarried uncles were Dad's brothers. They were like a comedy team. They kept us all laughing all of the time.


Mother was the only one of her family of ten , that had children. Two uncles married but did not have children. The Aunts never married.. I only mention two of them because the others died before becoming adults. My Aunt Agnus was a twin to Aunt Angela but Angela died before we came to be. Aunt Catherine was the youngest of the ten children and never married.
Aunt Agnus was a school teacher and she was also my God-Mother. She was a gentle, well educated woman. She and Catherine taught us the manners that we needed to live by. We were told not to cut our bread in two but to tear it into two peices. We had to say please pass me... and thank you. We were to sit with our ankles crossed never cross our legs.We took our glove off if someone offered his hand to be shook. We never interrupted when someone else was speaking.We covered our mouth if we had to yawn. However , we were encouraged not yawn in public because it might indicate that we were bored. (We probaly were) We were taught how to eat in public and how to conduct ourselves at all times. I must admit I broke a cardinal rule one time when my Aunt had me out for Icecream and while she was being friendly with one of her friends I licked the dish the ice cream was in. I found out what a big No,No that was!. As I recall, I have never licked a dish again!
We learned some of the other rules of life from our neighbors. If they saw us misbehaving or doing something we shouldn't be doing they were quick to tell us about.it.You may wonder what was left for Mother and Dad. Plenty!We learned respect, compassion, obeydience and what ever else it took to make us good Catholics, and good Americans.

I didn't even mention the school, we also learned how to be good students and citizens by obeying our teachers and pastors.When we got in trouble at achool we were in trouble at home ,also They all had our best interest at heart.

It did take a village to make a person. We need to get back to that. We need to get back to raising resilent children that will become strong ,honest,responsible people.CIAO

Loopy New Year

We are well into 2013. We have already had some snow on the ground, ice on the overpasses ,salt all over the city, sunshine, buckets of rain, clouds overhead and even some lightning and it is only the 10th! day of January.It was 30 degrees one day last week and it is 69 today and heading for the eighties.Oh,well .

We are celebrating the birth of Carrie's baby.(Gabe's too)The baby weighed seven lbs.five ozs.and as usual with new babies, he is beautiful. He was born on January 5, at home in Seattle,Washington.His name is Benicio Aloysius Avila -Mooney.  Better known as Beni.I am anxious to meet him. He is the twenty -sixth great grand child.  !                                                                                                     
How sweet it is!


 Happy New year to all of you!!      Ciao

That's a lit of Bull

On many a Christmas Eve little children go to sleep to dream of Santa bringing a pony when he comes down the chimmney. They are not always encouraged by their parents to wish for a pony but Christmas surprises or Christmas miracles have happened before! Dispite the fact that the parents say they have no where to keep a pony or even know what to feed them, these seem to be minor objections to the young one. Hope rests eternal in the mind of the young, of course there is a place for a pony to sleep and they have plenty of food around the house. It would be the greatest of Christmas's to wake up and find a pony under the tree! Eventually the child grows up and does come to the realization that a pony is not the best choice and they think up other things that are more in line with what the parent wants.

Now, I'm pretty sure that the couple I am going to tell you about were not wishing for a pony or any other animal on Christmas  Eve but when they opened the door to their deck on Christmas morning What to their wondering eyes did appear but a full grown bull! He was in a fighting mood and had already chased the two ladies next door.

Not far behind was the new owner of  the bull. He had just purchased it on Christmas Eve and it had pulled a big escape over night. He was there to try to get it back on his property but the bull was in no mood to be fussed with.They had to give up that night and for a few more days. They finally put a ramp up to a trailor and placed grain and hay in the trailor and trapped him.

The owner decided all those steaks and ground beef  were not worth the effort and said he was taking the bull right back where it belonged.

Poor bull blew it. He could have stayed with the owner and endeared himself to him and perhaps escaped the grim reaper but as things stand now he's on his way to the grill. No bull!!Ciao

Over the Years

About thirty years ago a group of people that I worked with at de Paul school decided to join an exercise class. I was the oldest member of the group but I was sure that I could keep up with the "young".Janet, the school secretary was in her twenties, and the others were in their 40's I was in my early sixties and had six children. There were about five or six other members of the group that we did not know. After about three or four weeks of classes mosts of the others dropped out. We worked out at the ballet barr for the first segment of the class. We did basic ballet movements and were so crippled up the next day that we could hardly walk, let alone use the muscles necessary for sitting on the toilet. One of the original classmates that I met was named Toni. She was a newly wed and very enthused about things like makning a perfect dinner for her husband for Valentines's Day and other things of that nature. We listened and made appropriat comments. Through the years other people joined and dropped out at a rapid rate. We vowed not to commit their names to memory until they had lasted through three or four weeks. It was not a 'bunny' exercise course. We did our routines to music and tried to give every muscle a workout. If you were not tired and sore when it was over you know you had slacked off. We spent Lent doing leg lifts to "Put On Your Easter Bonnet". We went through the whole song, when the lady sings near the end we were happy to still be alive. I think we did a total of fifty leg lifts by the time the song was over. We named our routines by the name of the music that was playing. "Sugar, Sugar", "MyGuy", "The Angels Sing", lots of Michael Jackson tunes,a lot of country-western tunes and many, many, more. We had some funny things happen during the years. One girl could absolutely not lift her legs up while lying on her back, so she solved the problem by sewing 'handles' on the sweat pants to help her pull her legs up. In the early years, insted of using 'store bought' dumb bells we would put nickles in a sock and tie the sock around our leg. It worked! We bonded together. We had lots of laughs, many tears and we worked through them together. When we met for the last time, we vowed to stay in touch. Guess what? We did just that, we meet every six or eight weeks and go to dinner together and since I am pretty much home bound we get together at my house and have a great time. Sadly enough, our studio and our blood, sweat and tears has been a victim of progress.Buldozed down, the building but not our spirits.

Merry Christmas is on the Way

I have been challenged once again by my computer. I am so lacking in technological skills that I embarrass myself. I have other skills, I could jump double-dutch, I could do a comlete back-bend, I bake a great pie, I used to have a good alto singing voice and I could go on and on but when it comes to my computer I'm out and out dumb!! I have been writing blogs since about 2004 and getting along just fine with it but 'they, the mysterous dough heads' desided to 'upgrade',there-by losing me totally. I now have blogs that are floating around in cyberspace aimlessly. I have drafts that I wonder if I or anyone else will ever see again. I hate to sound so down this close to Christmas but what's a body to do? I hope that St. Nick sends someone to aid me before the year ends! (I hope Pat reads this) Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Year to all of you. I wish I could hug each and everyone of you and express my true love for you. Ciao~!!!!

Twilight Zone

I was in a world of pain when I was admitted to the hospital, so they did what they usually do in the ER, they gave me morphine. I promptly entered a zone that is not for the timid. I completely lost all contact with the real world. I heard stories of the outrageous things that I said but the dreams and night mares that I was having were frightening. Despite the fact that I was off kilter, the hospital personnel insisted on asking their routine questions. "Do you know where you are? Do you know what day it is?, Do you have your own teeth?" I became very perturbed by these questions and caused my family quite a bit of embarrassment when I gave non-sense answers. They would change from morphine and give me other narcotics but it did not bring me back. Finally one of the doctors said"Enough!!"No more narcotics. It was with great joy that Kristin came into my room one morning and said,"Grandma,you're back!" No more fantasies. I returned to my real self. Of course all of the family was happy to see me 'in my right mind' but a few of them insisted that I was "loopy", their word, not mine. I became very upset when I would make a statement and they would tell me that I was making it up or that I did not really know what was going on. One night, I wakened up and felt my bed moving! It was as if I was levitating. Just a smooth move across the floor and then in a minute or so I 'floated' back and a man came out from under the bed and proceded to leave my room. The next day I related the experience to my daughter and she said,"Mama, that did not happen! You just dreamed that" I insisted that I was sure that it did happen and became a little agitated that my 'sanity' was being questioned. Later on a nurse came into the room and my daughter told her of my experience. The nurse, said there had been some problem with the electric outlet and the electrician said he could handle the problem without waking me up. So in fact there was a man under my bed! I had to shoot down any ideas that I was 'Loopy'off and on during my stay. People think I'm not for real on a daily basis, you would think I'd be used to it by now but not so! I did have an evaluation while I was there in the hosp. and I passed with flying colors. So there! Ciao.

Going through Hell

Winston Churchill said, "When going through Hell, keep going." That's pretty much what I've been doing for the major part of this past year. On February 4th I entered Baptist East Hospital for surgery and stayed there for most of the next six months. I was released to a rehab center for a few weeks but returned to the hospital again. I finally got to come home at the end of June but two days later I fell and broke my hip so back into the Hospital for another month. I had a few brushes with death during that time. I think I 'coded' three times and the call out went to all family members to come home to be with me. I took Churchill's advise and just kept on going and was back in the game again before too long. The family went back to their lives and I continued on my path to recovery. Believe me it was an arduous time, it took all of my strength and tenacity to survive. I am no longer in the hospital but I am pretty much home bound. I can walk very well with my walker!I have not fully recovered yet and who knows, this could be as good as it gets at my age. Next Monday, I will be 88 years old and all of the things that you hear about growing old are all true. I cannot open anything,I can't always hear everything, my eyes are growing weary, I have gaps in my memory. I forget things for brief periods of time and then the forgotten things pop up again in my memory. Some people call those 'senior' moments, I call them Versed moments. (Versed is commonly called "milk of amnesia") I have had it so often that I think it has left me with a part time brain! The one thing I can open is a book,so I spend a lot of time reading which is my first choice of what to do when you have time on your hands. I am re-entering the Blog World and will be relaying some of the happenings of my year. Ciao

No Experience Required

One of our old friends put a note on his Christmas card this year saying that he and his wife were looking forward to having their first great grandchild this summer. He was very excited and well he should be! It is an experience like no other.

When I had my first child my mother shared with me one of her philosophies. She advised against boasting or bragging about your child or children. Her reasonning being that if the person you were bragging to has children of their own, they did not want to hear about yours and if they don't have children of their own, they do not want to hear about yours. I could identify with that pretty much so I tried to follow her advise. (Even though my children WERE superior, and for that matter so also were my grand children). However; I think with great-grandchildren you should be able to dispence with that philosophy. So, for future reference for most of you, I hereby give you a dispensation. If your great-grandchildren are adorable, brilliant, comedic, and just downright cute, go ahead and let everyone know it. After all, they are three generations away from you so you can't take all the credit for their good qualities.

I have been able to get to know all of them. Some better than others.They bring you such joy and pleasure. One visited me in the hospital a few years ago at her own request. Her dad said he was coming to see me and she asked if she could go along. She crawled up into the bed with me and cuddled. When she was leaving, she asked if she had made me feel better.
Seeing her walk into the room, made me feel better! They make greeting card for me, write me letters, one sends me post cards when he and his family travel. When one heard me say that I was just 'plain' old, he objected. He said," You are old but you are not plain!"


I drink cokes that come in the original little eight ounce bottles, most of them refer to those as my baby cokes. It is a special treat to get to drink one when they visit. One time one of the grandsons asked if he could have one of my baby cokes; his three year old daughter watched as he got the coke out of the fridge and opened it. She came to me and said, "Can I have one of your 'big girl' cokes?"

There are many talents among them. One plays the violin, he's ten and he's been playing since he was seven, one plays the cello, she also is ten, one has had a small part in the "Center of the Arts" production of "Annie"' one was a 'snow flake' in her recital and said she felt like a goose in the white feathery costume. Her sister hastened to tell us that she meant a'swan'. One is working two jobs to help pay his tuition at college. One came in third or fourth when his highschool Cross Country Team won the State Championship in North Carolina. One that is in the fourth grade got bumped up to play with the fifth grade 'A' team in basketball. Another plays the piano. They are an awsome group of kids. I haven't mentioned all of their accomplishments, even great-grandmas can over do-it when bragging.
See I pretty much spared you from showing you pictures and crowing about my kids and grand kids, so I deserve the bragging rights when it comes to GREAT-grandkids. There are twenty-five of them. Eight great grand daughters and seventeen great grand sons. I'm lovin' it. Ciao

BTW none of them have red hair but not to worry they all like pasta!

Promises Promises!

Here we are at the dawn of 2012! As a young person, I used to hope that I lived to see a new century and lo and behold I did that and more. Twelve years into the twenty first century, remarkable! I'm glad to be here, despite the fact that the world is struggling. When we greet a new year it is like starting over in some ways. We have the desire to make changes in our lives that will make us better people in one way or another. Now, not all of us think it necessary to change anything about the way we think or do but some of us think there is room for improvement. If you listen to people talk about their resolutions for the new year you will hear pretty much the same 'ole'resolutions from most of them. Lose weight is the biggie, quit smoking, get more sleep, exercise more, stop drinking, swearing, stop watching so much T.V. Most of those promises are personal. The Health Clubs always have big specials at the beginning of the year. The time is ripe for people becomming exercisers and on a mission to improve their appearances. February is a good time to go to the gym if you are serious about it because the New Year resoluters have stopped going by then and you can have the facility to yourself.

How many people do you hear saying that they are going to be kinder, more tolerant, more generous, more compassionate, more informed? So many of us see the need for change in our personal appearance or in our effort to be healthier but how many of us see the need to make amends or changes in the way we treat the people around us? How many of us make resolutions to become a better person, or a better wife, husband, co-worker, neighbor,or friend?

I don't find it nearly as hard to give up eating donuts as it is to be kind or tolerant to a person that I don't agree with or don't approve of.
Depriving myself of certain foods and changing my habits can change my appearance or my health but it does not change my character. Trying to be less judgemental, more understanding, willing to listen, sharing someone's sorrow or joy, simply smiling at someone that needs uplifted when you don't feel so good yourself can be beneficial and can actually change you for the better. That is a resolution that is very, very hard to keep.

It is a resolution that we should all try to make and then make it last beyond January. There's a lot to be said for that Golden Rule! Do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Happy New Year. Ciao!

Flotsam and Jetsam

We live in a different world today than we did 40 and 50 years ago thanks to the Space Program. There are a multitude of items that are available to us because of the program that have become so common that some people can't imagine a life without them. I am not talking about the big items like the automobile, electric lights, indoor plumbing or those kinds of things that were developed a century or so ago; I'm talking about the common everyday things like freeze-dried food, athletic shoes,Computer Aided Topography (CAT scans), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI scans), 'Tang' the powdered OJ drink, Betadine, to kill germs, suits to keep you warm in the winter, thermal clothing, cordless power tools, self inflating life rafts, eyglasses that are less likely to be scratched, and the list goes on and on. All these items and more were developed by the space engineers to aid the astronauts and allow them to be comfortable on their flights. Life savers in many instances. They have been incorporated into our everyday lives and make life better for all of us.

When a need becomes a problem for the astronauts the engineers strive to solve the problem. Hence, the announcement the other day that they have been able to build a washer/dryer combo machine that can do both operations in one appliance. The astronauts are required to wear the same clothes for the whole mission. Except they do have to change their unders every few days; they remove them and jettison them out into space.It is rather staggering to think of how many tidy whities are orbiting in the outer spaces. This new appliance can wash the clothes, rince and spin out most of the moisture and then switch to a drying cycle and dry the articles.

We earth bound people have faced dilimmas when we are packing for extended trips abroad. You must face the fact that you will spend most of your time in the same clothes. You cannot take changes for every day of your trip because it would encrease the amount of luggage. That is not too hard to deal with, but it does get a little dicey when you try to figure out your ' unders'. You do have some choices, the travel catelogs have disposable underwear , or you can wash your underwear in the hotel room at night and expect them to dry by morning, or you could 'go commando'. When I was traveling in Ireland, one of the women on the tour bus had her 'still damp' underwear hanging in the window of the bus one day.

Now, to get back to the skivvies that the spacemen are throwing over board. I think eventually they will burn up on entering the Earth's atmosphere. It could well be that those shooting stars that fill the skies in August are actually flaming skivvies. Perhaps that star bright, star light, first star I see at night that I wish on, is a pair of size 34 boxer shorts going down in flames.It gives star gazing a whole new perspective,what if, as the song says, "Stars Fell on Alabama" that could make a rather unsavory mess on your front lawn if you lived in Alabama. I, for one, am glad that the new washer was invented! Not a moment too soon!

Now, I wonder how they manage removing their underwear while wearing those bulky space suits, aren't they pressurized or something? Maybe thinking they are wearing plain ol'boxers or the like is way off the mark. Perhaps they wear diaper type garments and have a trap door in the suits. Maybe I'll quit thinking about this and get on with things! Probably a good idea. I'm just sayin'. Caio