(Quality is not an option.)

The new antibiotics work! Swelling subsiding! Spouse no longer reading fine print in life insurance policies! The attempt to work from home– not so good.

REQUIREMENT:

A landing page for the big dogs. BIG DOGS! FLYING PAST MY FACE! (The Walrus ate the sealing wax.)

I like cabbage.

Hey… has anyone seen my shoe?

No more painkillers.

Still swelling. Dentists calling me at home to ask if I’m dead yet. Switching antibiotics. Really getting to know what’s on sale at Walgreens while waiting for prescriptions (again). Pain killers.

Dead nerve. Infection. Swollen face. Antibiotics. Pain pills.

From the Director of 63 Names in the event you decide to start an all Bob band and 20 Johns; and the Producer of Movie Tim comes an epic story of Who, What, Where, When, Why, and Howe.

Myths of the Howes and Buddhists
The Classic Hundred Howes
Where the Howe Ends
Howe to Boil Water
Teach Yourself… Howe
Where’s Howe? (and the sequel… Howe’s Where?)
Howe to Win Friends and Influence People
Hack into your Howe
The Future of the Internet– and Howe to Stop it
The Mythical Howe Month– Essays on Software Engineering
Howe-proofing Your Home
Frankenhowe
A Clockwork Howe
Do Androids Dream of Electric Howe?
Stranger in a Strange Howe
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Howe
20,000 Leagues Under the Howe
Howe to Lie with Statistics
Journey to the Center of the Howe
The Power of Howe: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Howe
The Howe Point: How Little Things can Make a Big Difference
Howe 451
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Howes
Howe to Date a Supermodel
Howe’s Inferno

The 27 day voyage consisted of rough seas, insufficient coal, and finally, smooth sailing. In rain and fog on the final day, the bark-rigged propeller approached New York harbor with its massive cargo. A pilot boat searching for a transatlantic steamer approached the vessel and called out, “What ship?”

“Isere from Rouen” came the reply.

Within hours, the United States war ship Omaha steamed toward the vessel and General C.P. Stone boarded the French ship at the invitiation of it’s commander, Captain DeSaune. When the General left an hour or so later, he carried a small case containing a roll of engraved parchment. The final paragraph of the document he carried said:

“Our work has been the result of the enthusiasm, the devotion, the intelligence, and the most noble sentiments which can animate man. God grant that it may consecrate forever the reign of those sentiments and the ties which should unite France to the American Nation.”

The work? Bartholdi’s statue, Liberty Enlightening the World. Of course, some of the sentiments mentioned in the document of transfer from the French committee to the American committee have changed in the 123 years since she sat patiently in pieces in the harbor, but you only have to gaze at her to know that others still hold true.

“CURRENT FOREIGN TOPICS. ” New York Times (1857-Current file) [New York, N.Y.] 17 Jun 1885,1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2004). ProQuest. Hennepin County Public Library. 18 Jun. 2008

“THE GREAT STATUE HERE: ARRIVAL OF THE ISERE WITH THE FRENCH NATION’S GIFT. REACHING THE HARBOR EARLY YESTERDAY –VISITS TO THE VESSEL–ARRANGING FOR THE RECEPTION.. ” New York Times (1857-Current file) [New York, N.Y.] 18 Jun 1885,1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2004). ProQuest. Hennepin County Library. 18 Jun. 2008

Assuming unprecedented peacetime control over the nation’s economic life, President Roosevelt placed in operation today his sweeping program for recovery from the depression.

– New York Times, June 16, 1933

It may not have been the simple, lean government that Thomas Jefferson had hoped for. But it was the beginning of a government that believed in the power to do the extraordinary. A $3,300,000,000.00 public works program (approximately $49,662,394,304.91 in 2007 dollars) designed to right the human condition after the staggering blow dealt to our country by the depression.

It would be followed by World War II, and the Marshall Plan, and it would be one of the reasons we would be able to stop the aggression of Germany and Japan, then rebuild them into economic superpowers.

What would it take to act on that kind of scale today? Well looking at the problems we face:

1. A weakening US Dollar.
2. Unprecedented levels of immigration from Mexico.
3. An aging infrastructure, including power, railway, highway, and telecommunications.
4. An overburdened military.
5. An impending global climate crisis.
6. A Social Security system at risk of failing the people who contributed to it for their entire working life.
7. A twenty year war on drugs that has done nothing.
8. A six year war on terror that is seeing tens of thousands of troops returning to US soil after deployments of up to three years.

It would seem that we simply need a new New Deal.

Step 1. Remove the border between Mexico and the United States by offering Mexico the opportunity to join the union. This single act removes immigration issues, extends the tax base, offers new opportunities for businesses to expand, raises the standard of living for a nation, adds to the ranks of the volunteer military, increases oil reserves, and pushes the front on the war on drugs to a more tightly controlled border.

Step 2. Make the United States bilingual. Immediately begin teaching Spanish and English in all schools simultaneously.

Step 3. Develop a new interstate system that reaches from Canada to the farthest tip of Mexico that includes high speed railways linking North / South and East West. Add a fiber optic backbone and a carbon nanotube power distribution grid to the interstate system, allowing data and power to be transferred anywhere in the country.

Step 4. Deploy technologies that harvest energy from the wind, sea, and sun in geographic areas that are most favorable and use the new power grid to distribute this energy across North and South America. Generate enough power to provide free resources to every country on the continents. Power drives industry and stabilizes the standard of living, and the more countries that can depend on us for energy instead of other sources the more likely we are to eliminate the threat that dependence creates.

It would be massive. It would take the cooperation of nations. It would require the elimination of prejudice. But it could solve the biggest problems we’re facing today and position us to actually bring peace and prosperity to the world instead of our current legacy.

Are we still able to do the extraordinary?

85 years ago today, a young man from Columbia University played his first game for the new York Yankees. It was a brief appearance in the final inning of the game, but it appeared to make an impression on a New York Times sports reporter, as on the following day he wrote:

Miller Huggins sent Lou Gehrig, the Columbia University slugger, to first base in the ninth, and Lou conducted himself in faultless fashion. He had little do to, but did it well and seemed to know something about playing first base. His only chance was an easy grounder by Tobin which Lou snapped up and then stepped on first base for the final putout of the game.

A simple, professional way to begin a career that would span nearly 16 years; shatter records; result in the first team number (4) being retired in the history of Major League Baseball; and end in tears of grief and pride.

“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

“Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I’m lucky.

“When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift - that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies - that’s something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter - that’s something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body - it’s a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed - that’s the finest I know.

“So I close in saying that I may have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to live for.”

“YANKS HOLD BROWNS SCORELESS, 10 TO 0 :Get Nine Runs at Start as Vis- itors Indulge in a Comedy of Errors.. ” New York Times (1857-Current file) [New York, N.Y.] 16 Jun 1923,7-7. ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2004). ProQuest. Hennepin Country Public Library. 16 Jun. 2008

With the work week done, we set the better part of Saturday aside to travel on the Cog Railway from Manitou Springs to the top of Pikes Peak.

Of course, if there’s a better time to play with the composite photo settings on the camera, I’d like to hear it.

When Colorado Springs is mentioned as the destination for my next business trip, I discover that those of us in the family on summer vacation are pretty quick to find reasons to tag along. Using a bed and breakfast as our headquarters, the family went to Colorado College while I went to work.

Later in the evening, we made a trip out to Seven Falls. While waiting for sundown, we spent a fair bit of time finding shapes in the rocks and trees from the observation deck.

And of course, I had to play with the camera.

Once the sun set, however, we just enjoyed the show.

It would be easy to spend a week out here, it would appear. Just a trip out to the far edges of town to see the night sky would count.

June 12th is kind of an interesting day to be a Virginian.

The anniversary of the adoption of a Bill of Rights in 1776.
The anniversary of Loving vs. Virginia, ending the state’s ban on interracial marriage.

I guess in the end, with enough documentation, any day could be kind of an interesting day to be. In the forty-plus June 12th’s I have lived through, I wonder what my track record is for consistent moral character?