What do you find interesting or unique about your family history?

• My great grandfathers both immigrated to the U.S. from Denmark as infants on the same ship which ended up sinking.  A passing cattle ship threw all the cattle overboard so they could pick up the passengers from the sinking ship.
  

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• Both great grandfathers then settled in the same town in MN before moving to MT where they homesteaded near each other.  They were both 100% Danish so I am 50% Danish.
• My paternal grandfather died before I was born so I never got to know him.  He began as a teacher on an Indian reservation and then became a rancher.  He started the ranch my dad runs today.  At the age of 54, my grandfather was flying his plane to check on things at the ranch and my Big Grandma was with him.  He had a heart attack and my grandma had to land the plane based on watching him over the years.  She didn't actually know how to fly.  She was a very courageous woman!  Here's an old photo of my parents with the plane.
  

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  My dad had it refurbished and still flies it out at the ranch.
  

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• My great uncle died on a ship during WWII from an infected tooth.  He was buried at sea.
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  My maternal great grandfather was a gymnast and would still walk on his hands to the barn into his 50's.
• My paternal grandparents got a lot of neat Indian artifacts from teaching on the reservation.  Here's me modeling some of them.
  

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• My mom was 16 and my father 18 when they married.
• The name Ray or Raymond is prominent on my side of the family and my husband's.  On my side, there's my great uncle pictured above, my brother, my uncle's middle name, and my son's middle name.  On Ray's side, there was him and his paternal grandfather.
• I have an aunt whose into genealogy and has done extensive research on my little grandma's side of the family.  Its fun reading all the information she finds.
• My dad was born on an Indian reservation.

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The guys had another great day of fishing yesterday.  Of course, not quite as good as when the girls were along but they still ran out of bait.  You'd think they'd start taking more!

We had one of my mom's famous lake suppers:  steak, walleye, potatoes & onions on the grill, corn, deviled eggs, and for dessert...cream puffs.  Later in the evening, the Gndsgang and her brother, DTR, came for a visit.  They've been spending the week at their annual Trailride about an hour from here.  Because of the horses, they can't have fireworks so they came to watch the show. 

One of my dad's friends is a big, fireworks guru.  He goes all out every year and now has several others pitch in to buy.  Supposedly, he had $5000 worth this year!  They light them off at the campground which we have a perfect view of from up on our deck.  The guys always go down to the campground to watch and Ray helps light them.  The girls stay at the cabin and watch from the deck.  The show got started around 10:30 as it doesn't get dark here until late.  The finale was at about 12:15 am!  I think it might've been a bit overkill.  Lily & Abby were asleep by 11:30.  There were also some pretty good fireworks going off at other cabins that we could see from the deck.

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Senator Jesse Helms (Repub, N.C.) died yesterday morning at the ripe old age of 86 years old. Jesse was known as one of the most powerful people in Washington. He was a senator for North Carolina.  Yesterday was July 4, the "birthday of America". The ole conservative timed his death well.

Jesse had retired a few years ago and paved the way for fellow conservative Republican Elizabeth Dole (yuck, the sound of her voice makes my skin crawl). He was suffering from dementia when he retired.

Alot of people will mourn Jesse Helms' passing from this earth. I will not. This year of his death, I hope the passing of an era of conservativism will pass as well. With this era will pass racism, bigotry, sexism, and a greed that has sucked this country dry and left it flopping on the desert floor.

Some of Jesse's claims to fame:

• He was a Democrat until 1972. That year he ran for office as a Republican Senator and won (and stayed there for 29 years)
• He believed the civil rights movement was a communist plot to take away the freedoms of "decent" citizens.
• He was the engineer of propelling Ronald Reagan to office.
• He fervently backed authoritarian regimes in Chile and Argentina.
• He opposed the Martin Luther King holiday in America (we got it anyway).
• He voted against every single civil rights measure in the Senate.

Quotes from Jesse:

"No intelligent Negro citizen should be insulted by a reference to this very plain fact of life. It is time to face honestly and sincerely the purely scientific statistical evidence of natural racial distinction in group intellect."

"There is no bigotry either implicit or intended in such a realistic confrontation with the facts of life.

"Those who would undertake to solve the problem by merely spending more money, and by massive forced integration, may be doing the greatest injustice of all to the Negro."

"I've never heard once in this chamber anybody say to the homosexuals, 'stop what you're doing.' If they would stop what they're doing there would not be one additional case of AIDS in the United State."

Some of these are actually funny in a stoopid kind of way:

"The New York Times and The Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals themselves."

"If God had wanted us to use the metric system, Jesus would have had 10 apostles."

The only thing I admire about him is that he said what he thought and stuck to his guns (aka did not back down). That being said, well, he was a real jackass, and mayhaps, evil.

Racism: prejudice with the power to enforce it. Jesse definitely had the power. Maybe Barack Obama getting as far as he has, was too much for the ole arse.

Adios, Jesse.

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One of our neighbors here at the lake, K, is a single dad with a 3 yr old daughter.  We noticed him pull in last night and my jaw almost dropped to the floor when I saw my BFF from high school, D, get out the passenger side.  She actually lived in our town until last year when she moved back home.  She's a single mom of 2 boys.  They're both good people and I think could make a nice couple.  I guess they've been dating since January.  I hope it works out and its so fun to have a friend close!  D and K's daughter came over to watch us do some of our fireworks last night.  K's daughter just turned 3 and Lily was having fun taking care of her.

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In honor of Independence Day, show us something patriotic.

4th of July kids

Taken last year.

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JP told me about Friday cat blogging. I think it is a great invention.

Sleepless in Seattle: waiting for Eli

awww....love is a wonderful thing

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http://www.theonion.com/content/video/bush_tours_america_to_survey?utm_source=onion_rss_daily

Thanks to Maura for word up.

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Since this was to be the last day of decent weather before a heat wave moves in, Lily & I decided we better go out fishing again.  Cody started off catching some good ones and then I caught a couple.  Next, Lily & her Barbie pole kicked into gear and she caught the biggest so far of the week at 24 inches!  Jace and Grandpa caught a few and then tragedy struck.  Nobody was watching Lily's pole when it got snagged.  Ray got to it just as it snapped in half.  We had to take a few moments of silence in remembrance of our best fishing pole.  You'd think we would've learned yesterday but we ran out of bait again.  Once the worms were gone, things really slowed down but we did catch a few on leeches.  In the end, we came in with 16 walleye but much bigger than the ones from yesterday.  I think it was a record fishing day for us.

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you have to quit because you've run out of bait!  My mom had to run back home today and do a little work so Lily & I went fishing with the guys.  You couldn't ask for a more beautiful day with temps in the mid 70's and a light breeze.  Lily started us off catching some walleye with her Barbie pole.  Then, Jace & I caught a few.  It developed into a competition between the boys & girls.  We were ahead until late in the day when the guys made a comeback to end in a 9-9 tie.  We brought in 18 fish and threw back several small ones and 2 white bass.

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Once a month I will report on a tree species and its status, as well as the harvesting of it, and expose a company that is exploiting and decimating it.

From Rainforest Relief:

The majority of mahogany on the market today is taken illegally from rainforests in Brazil and Bolivia. Outlaw timber companies invade indigenous reserves, park and nature preserves destroying not only the fragile forests, but the homelands of indigenous tribal peoples. Tree poachers punch new roads into pristine forests, cut valuable trees, transport the wood to middlemen and exporters who in turn sell it to importers in the U.S., Europe and Japan. The U.S. is the world’s leading importer of mahogany.

At least eight indigenous Amazonian tribes have had members murdered at the hands of mahogany loggers, prompting the campaign cry, “Mahogany is Murder”. Smaller volumes of mahogany are imported from Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Belize, Guatemala and a few other Central and South American rainforest countries.

The Brazilian intelligence agency has reported that 80% of logging in Brazil is illegal. Eduardo Martins, the head of the Brazilian environment agency (IBAMA), has been quoted on at least two occasions stating that the 80% figure is correct and that the agency would need four times its current budget to properly enforce illegal logging.

Two agencies in Brazil have declared South American mahogany within Brazil (the largest part of its range) to be endangered. Caribbean (true) mahogany is commercially extinct from its native areas in the West Indies, driven to near extinction by overlogging to feed the British demand for mahogany in fine furniture. When we buy mahogany doors, paneling or furniture, we participate in driving forests, endangered species and human cultures into extinction.

Overhead Door Company sells mahogany doors.

from the rainforest...

 

to your poncy house.

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