The Old Man and The Sea

A photo update on May and Addie's new toy.

My parents passed through town this week on their way back from Vegas where my brother Rick competed in a Firefighter Combat Challenge (and scored his new personal best time of 2:01). We went and played some Australian Tennis today (that's my crude version of tennis when you only have three players). My Dad beat my mom and me 6 (him) to 5 (me) to 3 (mom). I am always looking for players.

Then when, out of the blue, I asked him to guess what I memorized while at work the other day, he answered, "The Gettysburg Address." There are not many times in my life I can recall where I was left without words. He got me. I had memorized The Gettysburg Address. Some kid had to do it for his school class and I wanted to show him how easy it was. Then, it happened. As I paced the shop floor studying Mr. Lincoln's words I was overcome with all those patriotic warm fuzzies. I felt a renewed dedication to the "unfinished work" left in our hands to honor "this government, under God". So, Monday, I AM GOING TO REGISTER TO VOTE! Then, next November, I will once again submit my write-in for Superman as President. Who would be better than him?


And for your patriotic pleasure:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to theproposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.