Grandma & Granpappy

Here's the latest photo, taken Thursday evening as we were about to go out to dinner.

Writers

My favorite writer of all time is E. B. White, who wrote for the New Yorker magazine in days long gone by. He took Strunk's "Elements of Style" and modified it a little, and then followed his own advice. The one thing I remember from that is: Eliminate unnecessary words! If you read any of his essays, letters, etc., you'll notice he always picks the right one word, where I would use two or more. I've read and re-read his books and enjoy them every time I pick one up.

Lately, I've been checking on two writers who have caught my eye: Rick Watson and Dale Short. Rick has the blog at Life 101 and Dale is at Full Clear Light. Both have the ability to tell a story with the same clarity as White. I've ordered one of Dale's books at Barnes and Noble and can't wait to get into it. Rick is in process of publishing his first book, and I'll try to be first in line when it hits the street.

I encourage you all to check them out - White, Watson and Short. You'll like them, I'm sure.

Favorites

These are the Blogs I look at every day:
Shirley's Blog (my wife) at http://corgimom818.blogspot.com;
Mimi's Blog (my daughter-in-law) at http://mimimiller.blogspot.com
Life 101 (very well written and interesting) at http://dorahighschoolalumni.blogspot.com;
The Genealogue (a good sense of humor) at http://genelaogue.blogspot.com;
Full Clear Light (also very well written) at http://fullclearlight.blogspot.com.

What are your favorites?

Dust Storm

For those of you who have never seen a dust storm, here's a photo from the morning Arizona Republic of the cloud that rolled through parts of Phoenix yesterday. I've been fortunate enough to have never been caught on the road in one like this. These result in bad accidents, as people lose control of their vehicles.
One time many years ago, a bunch of us were driving back to Stillwater (my college days) when a wall of dust loomed in front of us. We drove into it to find it was only about five feet thick, so were out of it before we knew it.

Tempus fugit

Well cheese and crackers, how in tarnation is a person supposed to keep up with this technology business? It was a major change when we went from the Philco radio console to a tiny black-and-white television. Then someone came along with color. Then VCR's that took graduate engineers to program. Now DVDs, Tivo and digital video recorders.
And it wasn't too long ago that airplane pilots used beacons to find their way across the country. There was one just off the road on the way from Rochester to Batavia, by Black Creek, that always signalled that we were almost home from visiting my grandmother. In later years, when I had an opportunity to take airline trips for the company, the prop-driven Convairs would cruise low enough that we could follow traffic on the roads. In the winter, I liked to look down in the evening and see the lights reflecting from the snow. A beautiful sight that doesn't happen with the jets that fly at 30,000 feet.
Remington typewriters, then IBM Selectrics, then word processors, onto PCs and iMacs and Blackberry devices, IMs.
I had a 45 rpm record player when in college, a vast improvement from the old 78s. Then along came LPs, then 8-track players, tape cassettes, now iPods and MP3 players. I have almost 3400 tunes on my iPod, as if I can remember what they all are!
Now blogs and podcasts
It boggles the mind!