Some Things About Me

SEP 10 2014 Cindy and I have a little, 9 pound black dog named Peanut that we think the world of. We picked him up from MuttSavers on October 15 th , 20011. He had recently been neutered and they told us he had come in from Kansas and was about one year old. So we decided his birth date was 10/15/10. Cindy had lost her Schnauzer, Cassie, the previous February, which was quite hard on her. She wasn’t really ready for a new animal yet, but occasionally she looked on-line at puppies who were up for adoption. We had recently dogsat for a neighbor’s miniature poodle and liked the dog. Shortly afterwards Cindy saw on her computer that MuttSavers was making puppies available for adoption at a pet store not too far from us. The dog they were featuring was a poodle mix who later would became Peanut (they had called him Fritz). We both agreed that such an adorable dog would have little chance of still being available when we got there, but we decided to see what else they might...

AUG 3 2014 I feel I need to write a history of my experience with Fort Howard Paper Company, but I find it hard to get started. After all, I spent 16 years with them, the longest tenure with anyone in my working career and I should have something to say about all that time. In truth, much of it is a blur and there is a lot I do not remember clearly, perhaps because there was so much going on in my personal life at that time. Additionally, I never felt in sync with the culture of the company and always looked at it as a job. Many others in the company were very invested in their career there, I never was. So, here goes, this is what I remember and/or think is important and/or want to write about.     I was hired by Fort Howard Paper Company April 6, 1983 as the Los Angeles District Manager with a salary of $37,000/yr by Bill Yarnall. I knew Bill from my days at  Scott Paper, where I had worked for ten years . For some reason that now escapes me, Bill...

JUL 4 2014 Below you will find copies of my passports over the years that chronicle my international travels as well as changes in my appearance . Entries include Venezuela, Curacao, Trinidad and Colombia. Entries include South Africa, Venezuela, Brazil and Cayman Islands. Entries include Gibraltar, Spain, United Kingdom, Argentina, Portugal, Brazil, Peru and Mexico. Entries include Mexico, Netherlands, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Argentina, Uruguay, Germany, Portugal and Ireland. Entries include Chile, Hong Kong, United Kingdom, Macau, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Spain, Hungry, Austria, Czech Republic, Germany and France. Entries include Germany, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, South Africa, Mexico, Ecuador, Italy, France and Canada.

MAY 29 2014 No, I don’t think that I am a cowboy, but rather that I was born and raised in the western part of the USA and feel most at home here. It’s not as though I have not experienced other parts of our country. I have lived in both the Mid-West (Nebraska) and New England and travelled extensively in all other areas. Here are some of the things that come to mind that differs the west from other parts of our country. * Wide open spaces with mountains often in the distant view. We have plains and deserts, low humidity and, compared with eastern, southern and mid-western states, few insects. * Although regional accents are diminishing, people in the west talk like me. Folks elsewhere speak differently. * Our cities are new and less crowded and the buildings are modern and bright. * People here look fitter than in the Mid-West, East and South and we smoke a lot less. * When I go to a sporting event here, I support the local team. There are always a lot of n...

APR 26 2014 Cindy and I spent four days in Paris and an additional three in Toulouse, France. We stayed at a Marriott south of the Latin Quarter while in the capital city and took their excellent Metro system to see all the major sites; the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Champs-Elysee, Notre Dame, Museo de D’Orsay, etc. As it was Easter weekend (they take Monday as a holiday as well), the crowds were huge so we only waited in line for the D’Orsay and saw the rest from outside. We did not even attempt Versailles and the Louvre. The days of aspiring artists and writers like Hemingway, flocking to Paris after World War I because the city was inexpensive and the living was easy, are long gone, as we found everything pricey, even in the out of the way shops and restaurants. Long past as well is the reputation from the days of De Gaulle of Parisians for being rude to Americans. We were universally treated with respect and kindness. From Paris we took the bullet train down to s...

APR 16 2014 March 24 to April 1, 2014 Five friends from the Rotary Club of Boulder Valley, Maud and John Kenyon, Bart Swanson, Travis Ramos, and me, had a busy and fulfilling week in Nicaragua. We went there for both the adventure and to check into clean water projects that Travis’ company, Second Mile Water, was organizing in the small pueblos around the city of Jalapa. Jalapa is an agricultural center (tobacco and coffee) in the mountainous highlands of northern Nicaragua, just south of the Honduran border. Many internal immigrants are attracted to the area for the field labor jobs on offer. They have established ever expanding settlements of block-built homes on free or very inexpensive land along the paved roads of the valley. These homesteads often lack basic services such as access to potable water. Until a well-designed system (costing $35,000 to $60,000 for smaller villages of 500 or so inhabitants) is in place, they either access contaminated water from local stream...