Pinball Wizard

Life without electronic babysitters My generation was probably the last of the older generations that grew up without electronic babysitters. The very first device (Pong) would probably bore today’s kids to death within a few rounds of play. On Duncan Station Road, the kids would gather in the morning and make plans for the day. […]

Galvanized or Gone

Fire in the night Growing up in a steel town, I learned the terms associated with making steel at an early age. At night, the sky was orange from the glow of the furnaces and the cooling steel that emerged. No one who has ever lived near a mill can forget the burning sulfur like […]

Address to a Haggis

From 1961 – 1992, two cultures were given the opportunity to live side by side and learn from each other at a place called Holy Loch Scotland The locals taught the incoming Yanks how to eat Fish and Chips, the right way to drink Scotch, and a wee bit about the old ways. The Yanks […]

Originally posted on theleansubmariner:
The history of the State of the Union is a pretty interesting one for most people who study such things. The requirement for the President to prepare and deliver his views of the country are contained in the Constitution, “He shall from time to time give to Congress information of…

Gold! There’s Gold out there!

January 24 1848 is a day that will live forever as one that changed American history. John Sutter had hired a millwright named James Marshall to construct a sawmill along the south fork of the American River. The water was not flowing in the right vicinity so they cut a fresh millrace. The timber from […]

Pigboats

Pigboats “With his heart in his mouth, Tom glimpsed a dim bow as it came hurtling toward him out of the night. Firing had ceased; they were evidently too close to fire; evidently they meant to ram. Hadn’t he got his recognition signal right? He pressed a button; below him klaxons shrieked a warning through […]

G’day Mate, mind the dingos

I can’t possibly imagine two places on earth that are more opposite then Diego Garcia and Perth Australia. Finishing up a quick run somewhere in the Indian Ocean and pulling up next to a destroyer tender was welcome after all the excitement, but you quickly come to realize that if there was an end to […]

He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother

I don’t believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at. ~Maya Angelou If you are lucky in life, you get to have a real brother. This is no reflection on my actual siblings […]

Pardon me, can you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall?

Altogether now: Practice, practice, practice Getting from one place to another has always been a core competency of human kind. Man has made an evolutionary journey since the earliest recorded times on how to accomplish the journey more efficiently. Stars were pretty useful once the early navigators figured out that they moved around. Understanding […]

Location, location, location

After living near the sea coast for most of my life, living in farm country is a unique experience. What’s particularly interesting is that we live between several large chocolate companies and a number of farms. Inside the house, you can see the weather rolling in from a number of directions. But you really have […]