Jim

You can if you bought in 1980 like I did.

Ok, I stayed home as I'm getting over a cold. Let's hear the gloats. What did you guys get?

Not an expert, but I've done ok with tech stock and mutual funds. They do fluctuate a lot and you smack yourself when you miss an opportunity to sell and make a bundle. Just letting the money ride has earned me a lot better than money market or CD interest rates. Personally, I like the Fidelity Select Technology mutual fund. I'm only holding one stock right now and that's AMD. The company is aggressive at holding Intel's feet to the fire and I'm real hopeful of the longterm potential of the AMD and ATI merger. Don't come complaining to me if we loose it all...

So is Rosy ignorant or just trying to be vague and obscure with her grammar?

As Lori said, you might want to try a deer whistle. Motorcyclists use them (where a deer collision is a lot more painful) and seem to think they work.

Beautiful words, Kit. Thanks.

Don't kid yourself. The 401K was there to take care of Rosy and the old-timers, not the rank and file. The law requires it be offered to everyone, but you can bet the only fatcats at retirement will be the head honchos.

Oh, we're so glad that you were born, For if you were not here, We'd never hear.... Oh, nevermind.

Looks like a Sendmail configuration file to me...

No damage here, Johnny. Several people that I showed it to thought it was hilarious. Thanks.

My daughter was dedicated in the United Church of Christ long after I left TWI. My wife suggested it. We had a long talk with the minister about it. I explained to the minister that I had reservations about the Church and that I would raise my daughter with both a knowledge of Christianity and a certain amount of skepiscm. The minister was ok with that and did the dedication. It was a nice service. I don't regret it.

Me too. My wife started the class and didn't finish it and the limb leader wouldn't marry us. That was the end of my TWI involvement.

I always like reading your posts and only wished you'd write more about what's going on. Besides, you've paid your dues.

Saturday I went for a walk in a cemetery. I was at a little town way up the California coast. The wife and the girl were going from store to store looking at the things wives and daughters look at. I saw a big church a few blocks way with a cemetery on the hill behind it. I set off towards it and ended up walking from the bottom to the top, looking at most of the graves. In the beginning there were old graves, starting at about 1850. Lots of German, English and Irish names with a sprinkling of Scandinavians. Couples that lived 80 years together and then died the same year. A couple of babies. Mostly people that lived 60 years. Some unmarked wooden crosses and some very ornate monuments and crypts. Mostly simple stones. Graves that had been there 60 years and were carefully tended with fresh flowers, and graves that were 2 years old with weeds and decomposed flowers. The earth was soft under my feet and reminded me of where we return. As I went higher, I noticed that many of the men were recognized as veterans. WWI, then WWII, lots of Navy sailers. then Korea and Vietnam. At the top there were two remarkable graves. One was set way back into the trees. It was marked as a Korea vet and there was a folding chair set up next to the grave with a tee shirt on the chair and a football next to it. The other was that of an older woman. Her entire grave area was covered in little toys, figurines, and kid's jewelry. Some looked freshly placed and others looked like they had laid there for years. She must have been loved and missed a lot. It was definitely a non-TWI experience. I told my daughter about it and she said she would go visit it as well. On friday evening, I went to an Id-al-Fitr. That's a Muslim celebration dinner that marks the end of Ramadan. A few months ago I did a couple of big favors for a prominent Muslim professor and the local Muslim community. He called me friday morning asked me to attend. I told him I would be honored. It started with a welcome and then a call to prayer. The fast ends at sunset which is the same time as the evening prayer. You've probably heard the call to prayer on tv or a movie, but to hear it live was great. A young man sings it and it's very melodious and beautiful and haunting in a non-twelve-tone way. The men went outside and prayed then came in and started dinner. Dinner was very similar to Hindi food, except the bread is a little flatter and not burned. Seasoned rice, colored chicken (yellow), a great seasoned or fermented bean paste for dipping the bread, and a couple strange veggie filled pastries. Great baklava for dessert. There was a reading from the Koran, and a recital of the 99 names of Allah, mostly in Arabic. At the end there was a 10 minute teaching from the Muslim chaplin from Folsom prison. When I came in, I didn't know anyone so I picked out two young men that looked the most like terrorists and asked if I could sit with them. They invited me to sit and we had an excellent discussion contrasting Islam and Christianity. They were suprisingly well-versed in Christianity and were also very respectful of it and in the way they discussed it. So there you have it. two very non-TWI experiences in one week. Experiences that greatly enriched my life and added a tiny bit to my wisdom. Anyone else got a non-TWI experience to share?

Well, if either of you get out to norcal, Linda can park in my driveway, but dmiller can't :)

My take is that fundamentalist groups of *any* kind usually have little tolerance for original thought or interpretation. By definition, they have the answers and they treat anything else as a threat.

Del Duncan gave a teaching at a California limb function and the general theme was to listen to God when He calls. His example was himself and the zero corps. He talked about VPW calling him, telling him that God usually gives a man one chance, but that he was invited to come back for the 1st corps anyway but that VPW was going to ride him hard while he was there. Del cried, said going back into the corps was a turning point in his life, etc, etc. It was a very moving teaching at the time. Sorry I can't remember any more of it, it was about 32 years ago. As I think about it, I have to wonder if the failure of corps zero wasn't VPW's fault in some way. For all his flaws, VPW was not stupid. I'm sure he quickly realized the flaws in his corps program and corrected them. As far as I can tell, there was nothing coming close to a rebellion in the corps after that until maybe the sixth corps?

Very, very good. You are the man. I was just thinking about the name St. Germaine yesterday. My cousin married a St. Germaine back when I was in jr high. I remember going over to their house for dinner and how it changed my viewpoint of Hispanics to part of the family.

Templelady, I should have been smart enough to leave after the first "Burn the Chaff" day. I had a sick feeling and I should have gone with it.

I'd have to say that one area where my southern heritage comes out is a certain fondness for Jack Daniels and Southern Comfort.

Give that man a cigar. After the Doop/Heifer control consolidation, HQ controlled everything, everytime. Back in the old days we would occasionally do something as a group, but not as an official TWI fuction to get around the legalness.

The wind blows both ways, Ron. In the military I met southerners that were mean and dangerous. They seemed to have an everpresent chip on their shoulder and would just as soon hit you in the face as say hello if you weren't in their clique. I never did understand it.

I come from poor white trash Kentucky coalminer roots on my mom's side and poor white trash Kansas dirt farmer roots on my dad's side with a little Cherokee Indian on both sides. That said, I was born in Washington state and very little was spoken of those roots. My parents worked hard to pull themselves up to middle class and they were in Washington because that's where the post-depression jobs were. So there wasn't much pride or honor with the Kentucky and Kansas roots. My mom worked hard at losing her southern accent when she moved to Washington. My dad just never spoke of the midwest. I do have some good memories of my grandparents and the skills they brought out to Washington. I can remember going to their house and seeing the entire livingroom covered with a quilting frame and my grandmother stitching away by hand. My grandfather was an avid hunter and brought home birds, fish and deer. A buck hanging from a tree was not an usual sight in the winter. The pair of them managed a 2 acre vegetable garden and sold to the neighbors the produce they couldn't can, eat or give away to relatives. And they did this until they were well into their 70's. I have to say that if I have any roots, it's the West Coast. I grew up in Washington and have lived most of my adult life in California. I've also lived in Ohio (haven't we all?), Germany, Japan, Mass. and Alabama. I'll take the west coast anytime. And by the west coast, I mean everything but LA, SF, Silicon Valley and Seattle. They are too crowded for me. My daughter has the unique honor of being a California Native and she's quite proud of it. She's also proud of her Cherokee blood that shows up in her slightly asian-looking eyes. Of all the regional cultures in the US, I'd guess I find Texas the most interesting. Of all my business trips, Texans uniformly treated me the best and were the most friendly. They set a standard for hospitality that I always try to meet when I entertain guests.

Take a close look at this page on the TWI website. Notice anything different? Well, the first thing that caught my eye is that it's ok to say "Jesus" now. It doesn't have to be "Christ" or "Christ Jesus". Given that both VPW and LCM were both loudly opposed to the use of "Jesus", I find it very strange that it now appears to be acceptable. After I got over the shock of that, I found the writing tone and illustrations completely out of character with the old TWI that I knew. It looks just like something you'd see in any Protestant Sunday School. It's almost as if they hired a generic Sunday School workbook writer and told her to massage a couple of scriptures into a teaching they could put up on the web.

I've used Netscape/Firefox/Mozilla since the beginning and only keep IE around because Microsoft support doesn't always work right with Mozilla. I've always used the email and usenet client in Mozilla because Microsoft Outlook was suspect for so long. I still run across a website from time to time that won't render properly with Mozilla so I still keep an updated copy of IE for that. Also, if you do any web page development, you *really* should have all the popular browsers on your computer so that you can verify that the web pages you create will render properly on all of the browsers.