April, 2003
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April, 2003
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To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right. Confucius Tuesday April 1, 2003 Busy day... I will update tomorrow, I am tired. I am trying to get some Dry-wall up to replace the wall board that the kids have punched holes in... Cindy and the boys have trashed their rooms... I need to finish off the dining room and the hallway... E-mail from Linda Wivagg, telling me that she was going to get married on the 22 of June back in Connecticut. Who is Linda Wivagg you might ask, as did I. Linda Wivagg is the daughter of Lois Wivagg who in turn is the daughter of My Uncle Cecil and Aunt Emily Daggett... Linda is the youngest of three... I didn't know she existed, she is 32!. I knew of her brother and sister but she was omitted for some reason. Damn this is exasperating. I wrote back to her and asked fore some more information about her and her family.
Wednesday April 2, 2003 When you have solved all mysteries of life you long for death, for it is but another mystery of life. Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) [Sand and Foam] Just as tired today I got another E-mail from Linda Wivagg, telling me about her siblings and herself and in it she commented that her Grandfather, Cecil had died... last September. Her Grandfather was my Uncle Cecil Maurice Daggett, my dad's older brother, William was the oldest but he died at 13, then Horace who had a heart attack back in the late 60's then Cecil, my dad and Robert, all the sisters are gone now too... only Robert survives, he is doing ok at a retirement village in Concord, New Hampshire... I need to write to him, I will chastise him gently about not letting me know about Cecil. Dry walling again Thursday April 3, 2003 A man has reached middle age when he is cautioned to slow down by his doctor instead of by the police. Christy got me an appointment at the Dr. because my hands hurt so badly last night they kept me awake, I took a Motrin and eventually got to sleep but the Arthritis hits hard sometimes. The Dr's name was Name (Pronounced Nah,mee) Nice fella, he is Venezuelan. he looked at my hands and said; Yes, you have Arthritis, nothing we can do about that, I will give you some pain medication, can you take Motrin?" I said Yes. He said "Let me see your elbow." It is all dry callused, and cracked. Let me see your knees and ankles... You have Psoriasis, nothing we can do about that but it contributes to the pain of your arthritis, we don't know why." Also you have Pre-cancerous spots on your arms and hands, I will burn them off with liquid Nitrogen... nothing else we can do about that, stay out of the sun." I liked him... Dry walling again Licensing Inspector comes tomorrow. Mike and I worked on the drywall and Christy cleaned...I did all the repairs to the electrical outlets, fixed the screens, Monica cleaned the back yard and Cindy did the best she could. Lumpy did as little as possible and so did "B", Calie was coming down with a cold and was pretty grumpy... but she worked hard on her room. I took a break and called my sister Leigh and asked her if she had heard about Uncle Cecil dying and it was news to her too, she lives fairly close to where Cecil lived. I got curious and asked Leigh to call Aunt Dorothy's family (Martha Bancroft) and I called Horace's, my cousin to John in Fort Collins, neither of them were told of his death... I think we need to do something about communicating better in this family. John said we needed to have a reunion and I said we needed Group Therapy. I went to bed about 1130 and slept hard till about 0500, then I worked on the loose ends.
Friday April 4, 2003 Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. The inspector called at 09:15, I went down and escorted her back up here. Christy was up working at 0400 and I got up at 0500, Last year we got gigged for one electrical outlet being loose, I fixed that, and for the water being over 120o I went out and opened the door to the heater, I looked at the knob and saw "Hot" and turned it one notch to the left, Christy checked the water and it was even hotter, I went out and looked at the scale and one side said "Hot" while the other said "Very Hot" I had turned it toward "Very Hot" Silly me. One nice thing about living a couple miles up a poorly marked dirt road is that its hard for folks to sneak up on you. I took the boys and went to breakfast with them and Christy hosted the inspector, we passed, with some compliments... the work apparently paid off. We are actually getting pretty good at these inspections. I came home and took a nap and went to get the kids at 1415 as usual. I went to see a movie, "Basic" with John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson...I have always enjoyed Travolta movies, I can say that because I didn't see his L Ron Hubbard fiasco. Saturday April 5, 2003 (I know, I have put this one up before, but I like it and it seems appropriate somehow) The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What's that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating.....and you finish off as an orgasm. George Carlin I got mike to his Community Service, I cam home to a clean house, felt so good. I worked on the e-mail I have been neglecting and updated some of the data from earlier in the week that I had to put on the back burner because of the inspection. I was driving home and the car in front of me had his right turn signal on, I pulled up buy him and made note that it was just some old fart and shook my head in the way folks shake their head when they see something that lives up to the stereotype they have imprinted on their minds, then I looked down and noticed that my right turn signal was on too... damn. Cracked me up in a resigned sad sort of way. I heard on the news today that there are no American Reporters in Afghanistan... does that seem odd to anyone but me? There is a radio/Cell-phone/microwave antenna at about Ave M out in Lancaster, they have the same thing in Maine where they decorate the towers to look like pine trees, nothing looks more out of place than a steel pole with green branches towering 30 feet or more over a bunch of real pine trees, unless it is that same decorated steel pole in the middle of the Mojave Desert... cracks me up... I will get a picture. I listened to a segment on NPR where they were talking to Marines about MRE's and how they mix and match them to male different meals, the worst are the Hot Dogs, the Marines call them "The Four Fingers of Death" but what cracked me up was the Marine that said MRE stood for Meals Refused by Everyone Sunday April 6, 2003
I took this picture into the sun unfortunately, Cindy thinks a lot of her Grandpa, can you tell? A history lesson from the Manbottle Library: Question: Aside from Nova Scotia, where did Scotland establish a colony in the New World? Answer: New Jersey, South Carolina, and Panama. A mostly Scottish group founded the colony of East New Jersey in 1683. It was a fairly successful colony, and survived nicely until it merged with the neighboring English colony of West New Jersey in 1702. Less successful was the Scottish settlement of Stuart's Town in South Carolina. It was founded in 1684, and summarily destroyed by the Spanish in 1686. The most spectacular of 17th century Scottish settlements was the Darien Scheme. In 1695 the "Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies" was established. As the name implies, the goal of the company was to establish trade with Africa and East Indies. William Paterson, a director of the company, had a plan to do this from a single location on the Isthmus of Panama (known at the time as the Isthmus of Darien). From this position between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the colony could open up trade in either direction, effectively creating a trade "bridge" between east and west. The company ultimately raised £400,000 from investors, a sum of money which represented half the liquid assets of Scotland. The first expedition set sail in 1698. While it sounded like a fine plan on paper, there were a few problems in the actual execution.
Unfortunately, word of the colony's failure had not yet reached Scotland by 1699, when the second expedition was launched. They arrived to find an abandoned settlement, but decided to give it a go anyway. Sadly, they met the same fate as the first expedition. Over 2,000 men lost their lives in the two failed expeditions. The failure of the Darien colony was a huge financial disaster for Scotland. It single-handedly wiped out one fourth of the wealth of the country. This financial collapse is often cited as one of the primary reasons for the Act of Union of 1707, whereby Scotland and England joined together to become the United Kingdom. It really humbles me to ponder the depth of my ignorance. To be completely oblivious to such a significant piece of history is bordering on pathetic. To not even be smart enough to be curious about the origin of the United Kingdom is pretty sobering too.
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