LOU'S STORY

The book that Hendrick Hospice prepared on Lou is a great story of her life. A local university professor worked on the book and enjoyed doing another professor's life. I told them that I needed 6 more copies but later realized that with Sue having 5 children, Kathy 4, Mark 1 child, plus Laurie, Sylvia Grider and TWU archives I ended up ordering 15. They will be about $20 each for the printing and binding. I called in some corrections and they asked me if I hadn't seen a proof copy. I had not so next time they will make sure to provide an advance copy for editing before printing.

UPDATE

Literary update: I finished GRANDMOTHER SPIDER by James D. Doss. I finished this book in the hospital waiting room that I tell about in my new blog. I thought this was one of the best books I have read and one of Doss' best. He has the old Ute woman shaman, Daisy Perika, scaring her granddaughter about killing spiders by telling her about Grandmother Spider who lives in a cave under the lake that comes out and eats people who kill spiders. GS also kills cattle by biting off their head and putting the body in a tree until later. Then the local Ute policeman finds two abandoned vehicles and sees a big as a house round thing spitting fire come up out of the lake with dangling legs and a man caught in the legs. The same object comes over Daisy's house and she shoots at it with birdshot in her 12 guage shotgun. They all heard a man screaming and saw a man in the legs. Then the story gets more complicated as others get involved with his main cop protangonists Charlie Moon, Acting Chief of the Southern Ute police and Scott Parris, Chief of Police of Granite City. Doss is a retired scientist from Los Alamos and sprinkles in some technical mumbo jumbo to make it interesting. You have to read the story to unravel the mystery but it is one great story with a lot of different twists and turns including Moon's love interests.

I plan to continue this blog as more accolades come in for Lou. As my life takes on a new turn, I have created another blog bookofcharles.blogspot.com to document those changes.

Hendrick Hospice has completed their book on Lou and it is ready for me to pick up. Kathy is coming this weekend to clean up Lou's office and I hope to have it by then.

GREAT LITERATURE

If you want to read some great stories the Bible has a bunch of them. My SS class read Numbers 22-27 last Sunday and one of the best stories is about Balaam and his donkey. Balaam was summoned by Balak, King of Moab to curse the Israelites but his donkey saw visions of angels and stopped three times like donkeys do. The last time he just laid down under Balaam and got another beating. Then Balaam saw the angel and really got worried. It is a great story but only my class would point out that changing one letter in the bad king of Moab would give you the name Barak. I missed that when I was preparing the lesson.

Yesterday I worked hard and finished the three book reviews for the Library that were due by the 20th of the month. One was a biography of Bill Gates by Marc Aronson that I have commented on before. It is a good history of the development of the personal computer and the story of the transformation of Gates from hard-nosed developer of MicroSoft into the philantrophist that he has become.

Two other books were directed at high school students. Earth Chemistry and The Life of Stars that are full of evolutionary myths about the earth and solar systems. Interesting books with a lot of beautiful photos of the stars in the galaxies in the star book. I did have to point out in the Chemistry book that Einstein did not develop the equation E=mc2 that the author ascribed to him. Ernst Mach first came up with the theory and others used it. Einstein was given credit for a lot that he didn't do. His first wife developed the mathematical theory that won him the Nobel prize and he gave the medal to her. But he has become another myth in science.

LITERARY NOTE

I finally finished OTHER MEN'S HORSES by Elmer Kelton. It is the last book in his Texas Ranger series with another one due out this year. I have missed a couple of books in the series but bought this one from Glenn Dromgoole because it is dedicated to him and he signed it for me. In this one Andy Pickard is now married but still working as a Ranger to make a living. He gets shot twice in this story but lives to return to his wife. The action takes place in my part of the country with the bad guys stealing horses from the Indians and taking them back down around Junction to sell them. Andy goes after a local who kills a fellow who needed killing. He follows the wife who rides in a buggy and camps out. They encounter a black Buffalo soldier who also kills a sorry white guy in self defence but has no chance. Andy protects him while fighting the bad guys. The wife gets raped but gets her revenge by throwing a shovel of coals and ashes into his face. It is a great story of suspense and action. I am looking forward to the next story.

I also need to review a book for the library. I finally finished it also. It is a biography of Bill Gates by Marc Aronson. He was denied an interview with him so writes from the outside looking in. He directs it toward high school students asking how do you become the richest man in the world. He argues that you need the right parents, right school and friends but be a mean SOB in your business dealings. Of course at the last he credits him with establishing his foundation and our Cross Plains Library just recieved $4000 from the foundation to enable us to have 4 people attend the National Library meeting where CPPL will be recognized as one of the outstanding Libraries in the nation.

I still have a lot of other books to read. We started GRANDMOTHER SPIDER by James Doss. Doss is a retired physicist from Los Alamos who writes about Indian and white lawmen in NM and Utah areas much like Tony Hillerman's stories. I have enjoyed his books for years and have some that I haven't read yet. Some day.

LEAVING INDIAN LODGE

Yesterday Nancy and I drove the skyline drive from Indian Lodge that takes you over the mountain to overlook Fort Davis and the terrain south of town. You can see two enormous hot houses that raise tomatoes south of town. Up there our cell phones worked so I called Kathy to check on Jim and Nancy checked in with her daughter. On the way back to the lodge mule deer crossed the road acting like they were daring us to run over them. So it was like back home except I have white-tailed deer here. Looking at the weather forecast of possible rain and having frost on the car each morning we decided to shorten our stay and go back home today. We stopped to visit the Odessa Meteor Crater Park but the building was closed temporarily due to a water problem. We looked at what must have been the crater and drove on to eat at the Great Wall Chinese buffet in Sweetwater that was really good. More variation than I have seen in a Chinese buffett. I ate too much shrimp but added a lot of fresh fruit and some chocolate pudding. We drove into the clouds that WBAP said were over DFW all day. Rain is forecast here for tomorrow but with mild temperatures.

AT INDIAN LODGE

Monday as we drove to Cross Plains, the EMC ambulance turned down the road to Wallace Bennett's home. When the Cross Plains Library board met they reported that Wallace had Carol call to say he wouldn't be able to come due to a diabetic episode.

I am now on a new committee. Cross Plains will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2011 and the mayor has asked for a planning committee to represent all of the organizations in CP. I will represent the Library. We left CP in time to pick up mail at home and drive to Abilene to eat lunch at Town Crier. I had my usual teriyaki chicken. I called Wallace and was pleased to find him at home.

We then drove to Indian Lodge and got there before the sun went down because we were driving with the sun and it goes down a lot later in the Davis mountains. We found that not only did we not have cell phones we had to go to the lobby to find an internet connection. I called Kathy on the hotel phone to check in.

Tuesday we ate breakfast at the nice restaurant in the Lodge and drove to McDonald observatory. We had a great tour guide who lives in the Olympia Estates where the Halsell compound has all of the unusual construction using crosses everywhere. I had been to the observatory before but didn't remember the demonstration of the movement of the telescope up and down and the rotation of the tower to open the window for viewing. They keep the temperature cool so that it will be about the same when they open it at night. The next couple of days will be perfect for viewing. We then toured the newest large reflective telescope using multiple mirrors supported by truss structures that looked like something a civil engineering class would design.

We drove to Fort Davis to eat late. I checked my cell phone and had two messages from Kathy. One was early in the morning telling me that my number one grandson Jim was in the hospital for emergency gall bladder surgery. When I called her about 3 he was out of surgery and in recovery but had had gangrene so it was a close call on the surgery. He will be pumped full of antibiotics and remain in the hospital overnight.

GOOD NEWS

The dermatologist's office called today to confirm my diagnosis. The biopsy found no melanomia on my head.

TUMBLEWEEDS

I had to report what I saw today driving into Abilene for a dermatologist appointment. There was a strong wind blowing from the south and I was approaching an overpass. I saw something that looked weird moving to the north on the bridge. And as I got closer I saw it was a large tumbleweed moving along like a vehicle. I then looked to the left and there were more tumbleweeds caught on the cable fence that has been built to prevent cars crossing the medium. There is also snow that hasn't melted yet in my barrow ditches and others in the county.

The dermotologist decided to whack off another spot on the top of my head and send in for a biopsy. He gave me a brochure that described melanomias and it didn't fit the pattern. It was .9 mm and very symmetrical. According to the brochure it should not be a melanomia, but he wanted to make certain. So I will wait for the phone call. He commented that his wife met Dr. Maberry and said if she ever needed cancer surgery she wanted to go to him. I agree.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

OK so it is 3 days after New Years. I have already written several checks and got 2010 as the date. I celebrated New Years on Eve by eating black-eyed peas at noon at the Cross Plains Senior Citizens Center where they had hats and noise makers, counted down and yelled Happy New Year at noon. Vanda took a photo of my table so I will probably be in the next Review sitting next to Mozelle who told me how much she missed my granddaughters coming in to her shop. She was a fixture in Cross Plains for many years watching the world go by her shop window.

I spent New Year's Eve at home as I have for many years going to bed early as Lou and I did for many years. I was amused by the comic strips that day. Most of them had a theme about going to bed before midnight. And celebrating early. New Years day was a red letter day for me. I started by recording my car mileages for tax purposes, took my blood pressure, which was good and then the red letter was cleaning off my desk. I threw away some 2006 calenders at the bottom of the stack. It was about time. Now I need to keep it cleaned up at least for a while.

The next day I had a meal of ham and black-eyed peas and spinach just for me in Granbury. I then drove to Weatherford to get my belated Christmas gifts and was overwhelmed by getting a Garmin GPS for my car. I had really wanted one and Mark said it was Kathy's idea, so I thanked her. Mark mounted it in my car after getting it started and I used it driving home. I didn't realize that it had a feature that gives the speed limit and next to it my actual speed based on the GPS location of the car. Mark tells me that it is accurate and I found that I have been going over the speed limit when relying on my speedometer. When I first got the car I checked the speedometer using the mile markers and my watch with the seconds displayed and thought it was very accurate. Hadn't checked it lately. The Garmin said I was 72 when set on 70. It also sent my by the route through the back roads that I had been using so I was reinforced that I had been taking the shortest route. It predicted the time I would arrive accurately, also. I also got more chocolate, some Belgium from Mark and Kathy and some other bars from Ashley and Ross. I ate two bars on the way home. Ashley and Ross also gave me a Hickory Farms box that I will use on my trip for the week to Indian Lodge next week.

This morning our SS class tackled Numbers 10-14 and found that the Lord told Moses to make a couple of silver trumpets to use to guide the Israelites. They had two different tunes for coming to church and for leaving camp. I wondered how much it sounded like reveille or taps or charge. I know that the trumpets will come in handy later when we get to Jericho. One of the members was also a little upset that when Aaron and Miriam complained about Moses wife, Miriam got zapped with leprosy for a week, but Aaron got off scot free. We agreed that it wasn't fair. Of course the Israelites complained about not having anything to eat but manna so the Lord dumped so many quail on them for meat that they got way too much. By the end of the month they were full of birds. They still complained and wanted to elect a leader to take them back to slavery in Eygpt after the scouts reported that the land of Canaan was filled with giants in fortified cities and couldn't be conquered. That did it. The Lord said that only Caleb and Joshua would be left along with the children and the rest would die there in the desert for not believing even after all of the miracles that they had seen. The Lord was forgiving but also expected his people to live by his laws. We are still having problems not believing today.

Today was kinda cold and I wore an overcoat to church. The snow drifts that were about 4 feet deep are still now melted just north of Cottonwood. I still have a little snow around here that is still melting. I am dreading the below freezing predicted for two days starting Wednesday night. One year when it got down to 12 degrees my line to the pond froze, burst and drained the storage tank on the hill. Maybe it won't get that bad.

One good thing. TTech won without Leach and the Cowboys won today.