You go Lori!!! Isn't is amazing how we can now speak up for ourselves (of course, some of us always could) when we really need to. Sometimes people who think they have power and control just have to make lives miserable. I hope all goes well next time.
The interview went well....I think....the man was very gracious and sincere. He wanted to know lots about Springfield, childhood stuff...he was meeting with John Swanson who says he is the town historian...so I'll let him know all the important facts that I don't. It did get to be pretty emotional.....(I made him tear up....) anyways, the article is suppose to be in the June magazine portion of the Australian Financial Review....He is talking with my sister-in-law on Monday. He also watched the VT Fallen bio on Kevin.
I am going out to dinner tonight for our Support Staff Union.....

Let us know how the interview goes, Kathi. Good luck with that. And, by the way, I liked your daughter's music video. My 2 musician kids probably have a lot in common with her.

Happy Birthday, Richard. I hope the day goes exactly the way you want it to. Mine is coming up soon, too--the 22nd. Our 30th anniversary was on Thursday. All the big dates are in April. We went out to eat at a nice, quiet restaurant. I don't know if it's age or what, but I can't handle noisy restaurants anymore. Can't hear anything, can't hear myself think. So the emptier the restaurant, the better!

Patti, that's good that you reached a decision about moving to Bangor. It doesn't matter if it's the right or wrong decision; just having a decision gives peace, I think. You can always change your mind afterwards if it turns out not to be the right decision for you. Good luck!

Karen, I wish Curves was as exciting as your gym! We can't really talk much there, but I like watching women of all ages, shapes, and sizes dancing around on those squares, each one moving to her own rhythm. The whole thing together is like a choreographed dance. The fat ones barely move, but there's still something appealing about their tiny movements.

Last week I nearly killed an Immigration clerk. I went with my nephew Eli to get his citizenship, and we happened to get a bastard of a clerk this time. We had the exact same documents we used for Eli's brother and sister, so there was no logical reason for the clerk to make problems. But he did. Suddenly those papers weren't good enough, and he needs more papers. He said he'd send us another invitation to come in 2 months. It wouldn't be such a problem if Eli wasn't planning to fly back to Israel on Sunday. In the end, we postponed his flight another week. Our lawyer said we should just go back to Immigration without an appointment and take a chance that the clerk will agree to see us and accept the documents he asked for. She'll go with him this time, so it better work. If it doesn't, I'm under orders from my sister to curse him out completely.

karen, my hoped for date was opting out on me, but there is now a reasonable chance that it will still happen. she is special.

kathi, anything that you say will be fine, but the one word that you pick that tells people how you feel is the most important thing. it really is about how you feel. in the same way that many people who you know best have learned to care about you, saying the few words that explain how you feel is how many people, who you will never meet, will come to embrace you and hold you in their thoughts. love, richard

Such excitment going on! Richard with his travels and birthday fun, Karen at the gym, Pat moving, Lori wedding planner. I am doing an interview tomorrow with the editor of a Austrialian newspaper/magazine who is doing an acticle on the effects of war on a small community in VT...Springfield....I am very leary about doing interviews because I don't want them to misconstru for their own purposes ...so we will see how this goes. Hopefully it'll be a human interest story keeping the memory of lost ones alive..... He has a great accent..... wish me luck. Happy Thoughts....................

pat, the new dining room in presque isle did sound appealing. you gotta be strong to leave that behind for a man. i hope i never come between a woman and something like that. i would never forgive myself. i would probably try to make it up to her by being her sex slave or something like that. good luck :-)

Well, here's what I consider the Big News in my world. I've given my notice at school for the end of this school year. I'm heading down to Bangor later today, 6 houses to look at this weekend. I've told David I will give it all up and move with him. Somebody SLAP ME!

well, ya' know i also bought some pretty cool t-shirts when i was in memphis and i am gonna be back with the big nazo people next friday. they have a big party bash they will perform at in eight days on saturday, which is (that's right) the greatest day of the year- my birthday.

a man can stand on the banks of the mississippi and realize for the first time that the world has powers beyond what can be seen. ol' man river is what they call it- the mississippi river. the mississippi is cresting right now. it seemed to me that it must be the better part of two miles across ol' man river to arkansas and there i stood in bluff city looking at it all (memphis is nicknamed "bluff city" because of the high banks along the river on the memphis side as the mississippi flows past the city). i have stood on ocean shores and thought about men in boats that go to sea to find their living, but this was the first time that i thought that way about men who live their lives on powerful waters in a place that is away from the sea. three hundred miles down river is new orleans and still the biggest boats that you can imagine land at memphis as a major port and destination. like the river that has unimaginable currents, you can also feel that a powerful human current once existed when you stand in memphis. there is a rhythm in the air. three musical revolutions were born in memphis- blues, rock & roll, and soul music. people wonder what it could be that generated three revolutions in this one place over one hundred years of time and they come to see what it might be all about. when i say revolutions, i mean something simple that rocks our worlds. it makes you wonder about how that could be. you walk down beale street and the police have it well protected for three blocks. the rest of the downtown has less visible officers and it goes from sketchy to very sketchy to abandoned areas. and, this is the report after things have improved. what a story and what a place. it went from a cradle of music civilization to a dangerous and increasingly abandoned city to a theme park of itself and a diaspora of people that never left their city- the one they still call their home. these days, they are a diaspora because of what left them and not because of what they left behind. funny how the modern world and globalization can suck the air out of a room. blues is big in japan. rock & roll is everywhere. john lennon has said that the beatles would never have existed if not for elvis. elvis would not have left tupelo, mississippi and come to memphis if not for that sound that came from sharecropper's fields where carl perkins, buddy rich, and others came from too, i guess. soul music is black music that had blacks and whites standing and playing together, side by side, from day one. imagine that, great achievements that had their day and then faded away, and a river that stays strong. i realize that nothing is simple but i do have to tell you that the impact of memphis today makes me ask myself if there was something in their water, something in their music, and something that is still alive in all of us? god, i hope that all are true.

The hike will take until sometime in August at the very earliest assuming the boys complete the trail. That I know of they are not keeping journals though I know Colin talked of doing so.

Wouldn't it be nice if $$$ was no object....my daughter was up this weekend and we were talking to caterers, photographers and florist....along with trying her wedding dress....(amongst all the high school prom girls....these dresses are nothing like the ones we wore....cut down to the bellybutton, slits here and there....more like the red carpet stars..) I still keep looking out my kitchen window visualizing this wedding reception...hopefully, the snow will be gone by then! The city slicker soon to be son-in-law got to see the turkeys and deer...such excitement for them.
Here is the video of my daughters band, if anyone wants to check it out.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=30942012

Pat, glad that your son is enjoying his adventure...how long is suppose to take?

I also thought that Colin is the one on the left--though I kept seeing bits of both you and Dave in both of them! I think they're really brave.

Well aren't the one!!! You're right of course on all counts. Isn't he a cutie-pie???? Yes indeed they went through Stover Creek. I've been lucky that Jarrod's mom takes such terrific photos whenever she gets near the boys.

The boys' hike of the AT is going really well so far. They are coming out of the Great Smokey Mountains sometime today. although they are averaging "only"10 miles a day for this, their first month, the weather and terrain have been worth going slow in. They're getting a strong slow start which I hope will set them up well for the long trek ahead. We get weekly notices from them by text messages. The other set of parents is within a couple of hours drive from most parts of the southern end and hopes to make physical contact one more time before they get more than a days drive ahead. Hopefully we're going to get more photos. The last for a long time; probably until Dave and I find the boys either in Rutland hopefully or in the White Mountains for sure. Which one of these boys do you suppose is mine?