Good Morning All & Happy Saturday!
Happy Anniversary to my brother, Matt, and his wife, Val, on their 38th Wedding Anniversary which they celebrated yesterday! Here’s to you two, and here’s to many more years of happiness together! Also, Happy Anniversary wishes go to my former business partner & mentor, Hal Seim, and his wife Janie, who celebrated their Wedding Anniversary on August 20th. Here’s to you, Hal & Janie!
Happy Birthday to Spokane business leader extraordinaire & former CEO of Spokane Rock Products, Steve, who is 69 today and to long-time friend and fellow classmate of Olympia High School’s “Amazing Class of ’73” and fitness coach/guru extraordinaire, Dick in Camp Verde, Arizona, who turns 65 today (I think)…congrats on reaching the magical “Medicare” age, my friend! You’ve arrived!
Reading about history is a fascinating pursuit and one that we should all be engaged in, particularly during these troubling times. Our local newspaper, The Spokesman-Review, has a daily feature entitled “100 Years Ago Today” and in the August 20th edition it mentions Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s visit to Spokane in 1920 when he was running for Vice President. FDR was a real visionary and this quality really came to the fore when I read the words from the speech he delivered in Spokane in 1920…see what you think…
“Coming through today on the train has made me think pretty deeply, as it always does to cross the mountain states, and that part of the Coast state which lies pretty well back from the seaport, to see those great stretches of physical territory, now practically untouched, but destined someday to contain the homes of thousands of citizens like ours, to be developed by the nation and for the nation…And as we were coming down the river today, I could not help thinking of all that water running down unchecked to the sea…Reclamation projects will, in the immediate years to come, be undertaken on a vastly greater scale.” How true his words turned out to be with all of the great reclamation projects that were completed in the 1930s and 1940s, many under then President Roosevelt’s direction & inspiration. How about that!!!
Here’s the word definition for the day:
“Jargoon” (JAR-GOON): A mid-18th century French word meaning “A translucent, colorless, or smoky gem variety of zircon.”
Here is the thought for the day:
“I came upon a child of God…he was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going…and this he told me…
I’m going on down to Yasgur’s farm…I’m going to join in a rock n’ roll band
I’m going to camp out on the land…I’m gonna tray and get my soul free
We are stardust…We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden
…By the time we got to Woodstock, we were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers…riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies…Above our nation
We are stardust…Billion-year-old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil’s bargain
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden.”
—Joni Mitchell, “Woodstock” from the album “Ladies Of The Canyon” (1970)
Here’s to a great Saturday and lots of love & good wishes always!
Press on,
Papa ‘a (Dad, Uncle Mark, Mark, etc.)