Friday, March 28, 2008

28 Mar 2008 - Osprey Return


Every year at this time we keep our eye out to look for the return of the Osprey. Today on our way to going skiing at Copper, we spotted an Osprey sitting next to the big nest on top of the pole near the golf course. Normally we do not see one until April 1st. Maybe their calendar for returning is based on when Easter occurs and it was early this year. They will stay around until about September 1st.

This was a photo I found on the internet. Hopefully, I can replace it shortly with one of my own.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

25 Mar 2008 - Kevin Coleman


Congratulations to Kevin Coleman for placing 4th in Colorado High School State Alpine All-State at Steamboat Springs, Feb. 21-22, 2008. Kevin is a senior at Summit High School and the son of our friends Don and Linda (Prymak) Coleman. Kevin has taken the great skiing abilities of the Coleman and Prymak families to a new level. Summit County High place #1 in state for both the boys and girls, Alpine and Nordic skiing this year.

Congratulation also to Brian Coleman, Kevin's younger brother, who in the 6th grade, placed 16th in the State Middle School Finals. In a couple years, look for Brian to move the Coleman's to new skiing level.

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Wednesday, March 19, 2008

19 Mar 2008 - Sunset


Great sunsets don't need any words......

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Friday, March 14, 2008

14 Mar 2008 - Snow Plowing


Yesterday, Helen hollered for me to come to the kitchen. Hamilton Creek Rd that is just behind our house was being plowed and several large junks of ice came sliding down the hill and stopped within about 1' of the side of our house. One smaller snowball actually rolled up on to our porch area. I had spoken with the snow plow people previously about the concern snow coming down the hill as result of the snow plowing. They have been very careful since that time but today it appeared a new person was driving the plow. I have now spoken with the head of Hamilton Creek Homeowners Association and he assures me that they will take every effort to be careful. I also forwarded several photos of the latest plowing.

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Wednesday, March 12, 2008

12 March 2008 - Immature Bald Eagle


Yesterday, Helen and I walked out to our mailbox. Along the way, I reminded her that I had spotted a bald eagle while she was in the UK. As we were approached the river, Helen stopped and said, "Look the eagle". Sure enough she had spotted an eagle soaring along the river. As we watched, the eagle made a second circle over the river like he had spotted a fish in the river. He then soared within a 100' of us and then continued up the river. As he soared over head, we could see speckles of white under his wings. When we returned to the house, I looked on the internet and determined that this was a immature bald eagle somewhere around 2-3 years old. The photo to the left is one I found on the internet that looks just like the eagle we saw today. We were really blessed today to be able to be in the right place and the right time to see this eagle.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

11 Mar 2008 Sunset over the Front Range


Yesterday, I drove down to Denver to pick up Helen on her return from London. While waiting for her flight to land, I parked in the waiting lot. The sun was setting over the front range. I don't often get to see the sunset from this side of the Rockey Mountain range, so it was an opportunity to get some great photos.



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Sunday, March 2, 2008

2 Mar 2008 Rose Hacker


Helen has been back in London since Wednesday to "HandOff" her project to internal people before returning on March 10th. When I spoke to Helen today she informed me that Rose Hacker died on Feb. 04, 2008. At her death, aged 101, she was the world's oldest newspaper columnist. Helen and I had the opportunity to read her weekly articles while living in London last year. Her articles were always wonderful to read. Below is an article that was published after her death. It seems so appropriate at this time to include in in our blog. Her insight will really be missed.

Camden New Journal 2 March 2008

The only war worth waging is that on unnecessary conflicts?

Before she died, the popular and influential Rose Hacker – ­‘oldest columnist in the world’ – filed her last articles. Here is one of them – others will appear in coming weeks

MY husband Mark’s hero in every possible way, his brother Jo, volunteered for the Royal Flying Corps at 17.

Like so many other young First World War heroes, he was shot down. There are still some survivors around his age, 108.

I remember so well how all our lives were affected. As a result of his injuries Jo was blind. We don’t realise how much it costs to rehabilitate a person who has lost so much, but failing to do so costs far more. Calculate lost earnings at minimum wage. It’s close to a million pounds; difficult to believe. The real price is much higher, even without factoring in special needs, medical provision, retraining, physiotherapy and counselling.

Certainly we honoured the dead, but with war over we had interests other than survivors. How we all, especially young girls, admired the flappers of the 1920s. They wore their hair in a bunch hanging behind their necks, tied back into a big black bow. These girls were the loveliest things in the repertoire. Very pure. My cousin Dorothy, a typical example, ex­plained to us that she did not use make-up – that would have been “fast”.

She might use some beetroot juice to enhance her lips or cheeks as a natural substance could not be considered “make-up”. War had changed everything. Our parents and grandparents had instilled the idea that a promise would be kept and love would last forever. In many cases it did. That, to be honest, was how most people felt, but war was partly responsible for the swing towards sex for instant gratification with no consequences. Flappers had been part of the glamour of war. Girls going out with the “boys in uniform” felt unable to refuse because “he was going off to war and might be killed”.

Glamour boosted war. Reality didn’t. All those years, those forgotten, damaged men, a legacy that should never leave our consciousness and memories. Hardly a family was untouched by images of the “boys in blue”. We would see, strolling on Richmond Bridge, those capable of walking from the nearby Roehampton, just one of many large specialist hospitals for the war-wounded. Few got wheelchairs then. Now, despite increasing military injuries, the specialist hospitals are all closed except for one small unit in a Birmingham NHS hospital.

Many young men were shot for cowardice. Today we recognise they were suffering from shellshock – now more fashionably called post-traumatic stress disorder. But their fate was probably better than that of many who didn’t die. Such a fuss is made of someone who dies, whereas somebody wounded and ruined for life doesn’t count. Many end up with long-term mental problems, often living and dying on the streets. That fate of so many First World War heroes who did not die has been repeated after every war since.

The idealised glamour contrasted with the stark reality of Jo’s daily life. Never employed, his brothers gave him odd jobs as and when they could. In those days the war-wounded were mostly burdens on their wives and families, expected to do it all somehow without help.
Jo married but didn’t have children. He died rather horribly of skin cancer while his wife was visiting her family in Belgium. She asked for the ashes to be sent to her. Half went into her family vault in the Catholic church in a Belgian town whose name I can’t remember – it began with a B.

In my imagination, on resurrection day, half of Jo’s skeleton will be dancing in Belgium while the other half dances at the Golders Green crematorium. Then there were frequent heartless references to the “two million surplus women” whose men never came back. Many children never knew their fathers except by name and a notice of death.

Several wars on, fought for King/Queen and country – Iraq and Afghanistan are the ­latest – I would have thought that people would begin to see through the subterfuge and say “Enough is enough,” but maybe I’m wrong. It makes you feel so hopeless. I may oppose war, but I see the contempt governments show for the young people they sacrifice for its fake glory and glamour.
Couldn’t we have a culture where people only sacrifice for all of society, the whole world, where only the United Nations could authorise war?
Whatever happened to the non-proliferation treaties? Our governments make nonsense of them.

It’s time we realised these wars are just rubbish. We have plenty of blue pencils, enough skills to design a new peaceful world order, if only we weren’t so corrupted. And what about those “pure young things”? We still send glamorous female pop stars to entertain our troops. Could we make the connection that Robert Burns did?

“I waive the quantum of the sin,
The hazard of ­concealing;
But, oh! it hardens all within,
And petrifies the ­feeling!”

Are we concealing the truth of war under glamorous images and does that harden our hearts? The glamour of the flapper era is long past. It’s time for reality. Maybe things would change if each side sent thousands or millions to sing against each other, a musical glamour offensive.
Let’s put our leaders, the Bushes, Browns, Blairs and more on to white chargers to fight each other, while the foot soldiers stage international singing contests fighting for the biggest, most glamorous prize of all, world peace.

2 Mar 2008 What a difference a day makes


Yesterday, it was clear and summer like with the temperature reaching 57 degrees. In the front range they had record high reading of 73. 24 hours later, we are having a snow storm, blowing winds with wind chills at 5 F.

It does not appear that we will get major snow accumulation as much of the storm is dumping north of us in the Steamboat Springs area.

The bunny rabbit that was consuming lots of grass the past few days seemed to know that a storm was on it's way. He is now tucked deep in the willows with a full stomach waiting out the storm.