SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE--

The conservatives in the US House of Representatives finally got rid of the soon to be x-Speaker. Now it appears the GOP majority is about to elect a new speaker endorsed by Sen. Harry Reid.

God help us!

75 LAPS AROUND THE SUN--

Good grief.  How many miles would that be?  The sun is about 93 million miles from Earth so that would be the radius of a very large circle.  The formula for determining the circumference of a circle is Pi times the diameter.

So, the circumference of our very large circle would be 93 million miles X 2 or 186 million miles X Pi.  Let's use the short form of 3.14.  That's close enough for our purposes.  So, that leaves us with 186 x 3.14 or 584--million miles.

That's how many miles I've traveled while hitching a ride on Earth as it has circled the sun for those 75 years since my birth.

No wonder I feel a bit tired once in awhile.

Now that I think of it,wouldn't it be great to convert that into a frequent-flyer reward!

At a more pedestrian level my bicycling-birdwatching-geocaching-kayaking friend Greg hopped enthusiastically on the thought of riding our bicycles 75 miles one day to celebrate my then approaching 75th birthday.

After all I did 65 miles then 70 miles to celebrate those birthdays.  Completely forgetting I am not getting any younger as these years roll along, I did not discourage his enthusiasm.

Woe is me.

Yup, we gave it a shot--and, to my surprise, did manage to pedal ourselves 55 miles that day on the local bike trail.  We both had some energy left but I was about out of gas and the end that usually follows him around was complaining too.

So, that ended that.

But, as my birthday continued to creep up on me my son Brian proposed we do a fairly hefty ride on our motorcycles.  A sunny day presented itself and we meandered around the Ohio backroads, mostly in Amish country for about 130 miles.

Ignoring the fact this latest 2-wheeler had a throttle, I felt perfectly exonerated from that measly 20 mile failure in our bicycling challenge.

That evening at our student's square dancing lessons my birthday continued its celebration with a boatload of hugs and handshakes when my birthday was recognized publicly.  The very next morning Sue and I joined Mark and Nancy Meinzer (above) in that amazing, geocaching outing in Wapakoneta discussed in the previous story.  Saturday night Sue treated me to dinner at a local, Italian restaurant then the musical "Singing in the Rain", on stage at the Mansfield OSU campus.  The celebration continued Sunday with a visit with Sue's sister in Newark where Patsy treated me to a yummy steak dinner.

Leave it to me to screw up this delightful chain of celebratory events--by scheduling some car repair work on Monday's actual anniversary of my birth.  When the young lady at the car doctor's office offered me an appointment that day, I took it, being completely unmindful the day had some other significance attached.

Now, let me see; where did I put that list of frequent-flyer reward offers. 



  

THE TEMPLE OF TOLERANCE--


The mystique of Stonehenge is alive and well in a quiet residential neighborhood of Wapakoneta, OH where an unbelievable collection of boulders from geologic time anchors this reverent assembly of folklore whose ultimate meaning is left to the scholarly instincts of the beholder.

During our geocaching visit we had the marvelous experience of a rambling discussion of his creation with the creator; James R. Bowsher, Writer - Archaeologist - Folklore Collector - Lecturer and Master of his assemblage of antiquities, geologic and otherwise; where a nudge of pious reflection oozes from--everywhere!

As he described the assembly of rocks, many of unfathomable weight, my thoughts wandered to construction techniques from antiquity where "machinery" consisted of ropes, rollers and ingenuity uncommon in today's understanding of such things.

His temple includes an aging residential structure and some equally geriatric outbuildings, all adorned with relics of the past.  It's a stone garden confined within an antique, wrought-iron fence, with cubbyholes begging for discovery around every corner.  

We were there hunting for clues that would lead us to a geocache container and our hobby's reward of discovery; vastly exceeded by our sense of discovery in absorbing the meaning of Jim's creation.

Jim admitted having no formal, scholarly acclaim but I chose to think of his life's PhD being in the form of pious, geologic philosophy...

...with a great sense of humor as evidenced by this jarring artifact hanging from the eaves:

Photos:  Sue (top) ponders the grand-daddy of backyard stonework.  Jim (top left) creator.  Mark Meinzer (right) who with wife Nancy were our caching companions for this expedition, and (lower) this grand-daddy of conflicted meaning.