2018 will be history is a few more hours. It has been a good year and I am so thankful for Gods Blessings. I was able to put photos of this year with dates beside them to show you how fast this year went as well as show you what is important to us. If your photo is not in our video- I am sure it is in our hearts.
This is my 15th blog/video this year- thank you for taking time to share memories. As of the end of the year, Little Star is my most viewed with 500 views, a song about my youngest grandson and how fast he is growing up. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes is second most viewed with 380 views- a review of the annual smoke we must breath each summer due to fires. Third was "Why do kids grow up" with 355 views and is about my grandkids as well. I hope you have a wonderful new year.
"King of the Road" is a song written and originally recorded in November 1964 by country singer Roger Miller. The lyrics tell of the day-to-day life of a vagabond hobo who, despite being poor, revels in his freedom, describing himself humorously as the "king of the road" I added some photos of some homeless camps in Wenatchee- they choose this life style even though it is cold out. They are not homeless, just choose to live differently than some and do not want the rules of shelters or to pay taxes. Most are good people, just leave a bit of trash behind and just want to be left alone. Some probably use or tried drugs and drinking- a costly move for those.
"When I am 64" was recorded on December 6th, 1966, by the Beatles. I was 12 years old at the time. I am not sure if I liked the song, as 64 seemed so old at the time. Now 52 years later I will turn 64 today. Those 52 years have gone by too fast. I found a similar song on the internet called "when I am 94" -a parody by Loose Bruce Kerr, that I added some photos of my life to. I have no idea how long I will live- but here is my goal-"I aspire to inspire until I expire."
Life Is Like A roll of Toilet Paper- as you get near the end-
it goes twice as fast.
This is what an old man looks like- taken this week at work.
I am 64 years old and I have so many unanswered questions!!!! I still haven't found out who let the Dogs Out...where's the beef...how to get to Sesame Street... why Dora doesn't just use Google Maps...Why do all flavors of fruit loops taste exactly the same, or how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop......why eggs are packaged in a flimsy paper carton, but batteries are secured in plastic that's tough as nails... why "abbreviated" is such a long word; or why is there a D in 'fridge' but not in refrigerator... why lemon juice is made with artificial flavor yet dish-washing liquid is made with real lemons... why they sterilize the needle for lethal injections... and, why do you have to "put your two cents in" but it's only a "penny for your thoughts" where's that extra penny going to... why do The Alphabet Song and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star have the same tune... why did you just try to sing those two previous songs... and just what is Victoria's secret? ...and do you really think I am this witty?? ... I actually got this from a friend, who stole it from her brother's girlfriend's, uncle's cousin's, baby momma's doctor who lived next door to an old class mate's mail man..
At 65 if you wake up and nothing hurts it means you died in the night.
Where can 65-year-old men find younger women who are interested in them? In the bookstore, under “Fiction.”
65 years old is when you wake up in the morning looking forward to that nap in the afternoon.
Autumn starts today per the Calendar, but can you tell a seasons starting/ending by a date on the calendar? I love the 4 seasons we have here. I am not sure which season is my favorite. I think Autumn sneaks up on us faster than any other season- I never know when we are in the peak of autumn- no matter how pretty the leaves are- it can change so quickly, and sometimes become even more brighter. I am also amazed how short the days are getting. I added some photos 8 years ago, to a Bill Gaither Song written by Ira Stamphill. I am so blessed to have so many great years with Janice. We never know when winter will arrive for us. Life is Great!
Autumn is a season for big decisions -- like whether or not it's too late to start spring cleaning.
Sept. 17th, 2017, I transferred to maintenance. This year has gone by so fast. I started in Maintenance on Oct. 4th, 1993 and was with them for 10 years- then spent 14 years on striping crew. I have truly enjoyed working with a great team/bosses and I like to think we are still one DOT even though there are so many areas/skills I have yet to learn. This is a video of the last years photos I have taken- obviously not all the activities (and I was probably working if you do not see me), but to give you an overview of what my year has been like in Maintenance. This is my 14th WSDOT maintenance video made, and 18th of striping, and may not be endorsed by management or fellow workers. It gets harder and harder to see my friends retire, but I cherish the memories and look forward to each day.
We have had 2 months of unhealthy air to breath due to fires, so I was happy to accept a family request to meet at Lincoln City, Oregon for two days this week. We were also able to spend Sunday night in Portland with Jan's brother and on way home we stopped at Multamonah Falls that I was not able to fit into the song called Surf City. This was one of the songs they played at Casino, although I did not gamble. I hope the song brings back memories for you.
How is this for Gods Handiwork- this is the sand on the beach
Wednesday morning we stopped at Multamonah Falls- last year it was almost destroyed by an arsonist. you can see the rest of the photos of Lincoln city trip on the video.
Each year in Central Washington we see more and more smoke from fires. Air quality for last month has been hazardous and unhealthy. The state and feds choose to use fire to thin forests rather than graze and log- this results in extra smoke and even the loss of several fire fighters each year. Sadly, about 80% of our fires are human caused, and nature is responsible for about 20%- those usually are the big ones that are causing most smoke and not as aggressively put out. I chose a song by the Platters from 1958 to remind us that Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. The original song was written in 1933- a basic fact of life that some politicians forget when they do not live in our area.
The Pacific Northwest is experiencing unhealthy amounts of smoke and ash from wildfires, with air quality more than twice as bad as Beijing, a city notorious for urban pollution.
The hazardous haze has left Seattle with a sky so unclear people can’t see mountains or the city skyline, flights have been delayed and authorities have warned healthy adults to remain indoors.
The smoky pollution has put the area’s air quality among the world’s worst, caused by wildfires out of British Columbia and the Cascade Mountains during a season that many spend outdoors, Q13FOX reported.
As of Wednesday morning, Seattle’s air pollution was equivalent to a “cigarette intake” of more than nine cigarettes, according to research made by Berkeley Earth.
The Environmental Protection Agency reported that Seattle's air quality index was between 180 and 204 (very unhealthy), whereas Beijing, China was 78 (moderate).
Smoke-related health symptoms include scratchy throat, coughing, stinging eyes, runny nose, irritated sinuses, and headaches, according to health officials. For people with heart or lung disease, they may experience shortness of breath, fatigue, chest pain, and irregular heartbeats.
The National Weather Service issued air quality alerts for much of Washington state as well as parts of northern Idaho until late Wednesday, but the levels are expected to improve through Thursday night and into Friday. Officials are urging residents to limit outdoor activity when possible.
Washington has had 939 wildfires this year alone – more than ever before – burning more than 34,000 acres protected by the state's Department of Natural Resources, the Seattle Times reported.
Washington lawmakers hope to fight forest fires with fire
by
Daniel Jack Chasan
July 30, 2018
This year, state and federal lawmakers are determined to give our forests a fighting chance by making them more resilient. Washington forests that can withstand occasional fires might be able to cope with climate change -- which will limit the long-range risk and cost of wildfires.
To better our hopes the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has announced plans identify 1.2 million acres of diseased forests and turn things around. The DNR's new 20-Year Forest Health Strategic Plan: Eastern Washingtoncalls for treating those acres and more by 2037. State legislature called for the plan at the beginning of this year and increased money available for forest health by 80 percent.
Even Congress has gotten at a bit of religion on the subject. For years, the U.S. Forest Service has been starved for money to manage forests rather than fight fires. As the cost of fighting fires has risen (the federal tab now runs more than $2 billion), the agency has taken money that should have been used to improve forest health and plowed it into firefighting. This year's omnibus appropriations act seems to have insulated forest health money from the constant demands of firefighting.
After two record-breaking wildfire seasons during which the state spent some $500 million fighting wildfires, Washington legislators were finally willing to appropriate unprecedented sums of money for forest health. Years of aggressive fires seemed to unify several interest groups that had been previously working in their own political and economic silos.
"This is all of our problem,” says Tom Bugert, The Nature Conservancy's Washington director of state government relations. He says the transformation has been "night and day" — and it couldn’t come at a better time.
"We expect the footprint of fire to quadruple," explains Bugert. "If we go on a trajectory where we do nothing, we will see more and more high-severity fires [from which] the forests will take longer and longer to recover."
"[East of the mountains] we have 2.7 million acres of diseased and dying forest lands," says State Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz. That's over one-fourth of all the forest east of the Cascade crest. Franz says that "in many of our forests, especially on our federal lands, there has really been no treatment" to remove fuel or create spaces among the trees. There's "not a lot of ability for sunlight to get in, [and there are] more trees competing for water and sunlight." All of them, she says, are "struggling and dying" and once insects kill or weaken enough of them, they’re ready to go up in smoke. "Given the reality of climate change we're only likely to see more wildfires."
Combating such challenging odds will require extensive thinning and controlled burns to mimic the conditions that created healthy forests of the distant past. Bugert says we’re theoretically on the right track.
"I think our state is doing the right things — DNR has really emerged as a regional leader," Bugert says. “It’s a bold vision [and] far more than we could have hoped for."
The big issue with crowded, diseased eastern Ponderosa forests that Franz describes are ladder fuels. For generations, people cut the biggest, most valuable, fire-resistant Ponderosa pines. This created light and space for smaller trees and brush to grow. Humans also snuffed out low-intensity fires that historically got rid of ladder fuels and the exacerbating build-up of dead wood and needles on the forest floor.
Recent forest management was a stark reversal from the way we’d managed fires throughout prehistory. Lightning sparked some low-intensity fires back in the day, but for centuries humans did their part. Forester Derek Churchill says the historical record seen in the oldest ponderosas indicates humans have been making controlled burns in the area for 1,500 years -- though it probably happened even earlier than that. The mountain meadows John Muir describes as Edenic and primeval actually got that way through Native Americans’ use of fire to create space for grazing game. White colonizers were far less disciplined, and the forests suffered.
But civilization makes getting rid of fuels the old-fashioned way much more complicated. Nobody wants to breathe smoke from controlled burns – and air pollution standards may forbid it. But not breathing any smoke at all isn't an option for residents who live near vulnerable forests.This spring, smoke from controlled burns filled the Methow Valley. If the plan works, manmade burns plus smaller wildfires will be necessary to restore healthy forests.
"It's a question not of ‘do you want smoke,’ but ‘how do you want your smoke?’" Bugert says. "If we want to continue to live in the forest, we will need to have fire in the landscape."
You can see what this looks like on the ground on a hillside near Cle Elum. At the 80,000-acre Manastash-Taneum Resilient Landscape Restoration Project, a dry slope not far from I-90 hosts two different versions of the same forest side by side. One side has been treated— trees are thinned and underbrush is removed — and the other has not. The treated side is park-like, with trees standing at wide intervals between grassy groundcover. The untreated side is just a green wall. If fire strikes that wall, nothing will stop it.
“[The project] goes to show that you can achieve multiple outcomes," Bugert says. "You can combine good forest health thinning and at the same time use some of these revenues to invest [in improving habitat]. If you take an approach like that, suddenly a million acres doesn't seem wildly unrealistic."
There’s only one catch: State and federal governments will have to keep the financial tap flowing for the long-term. Despite recent state and federal appropriations, "money is the first and most significant barrier," Franz says. ”We have to make the case that we have a forest health crisis."
Society and its elected representatives will have to sustain a sense of crisis for a long time. Over that long haul, Churchill says, it will be necessary to stay focused and "manage expectations" so that when a big wildfire inevitably happens, people don't give up on the process. “It has taken us 100 years to create the current problem,” Churchill says. “It had better not take another hundred years to solve it.”
Happy Anniversary to Dawn and Derek. It has been years since I updated a Anniversary Video for Dawn and Derek; so here are a few photos in 29 seconds of that journey. I tried to catch a few moments that I hope will jog memories and moments you have stored in your memory. We wish you many more years together. Happy Anniversary!
Here is a photo from Wedding Day-
Married at Wenatchee First Assembly by Rev. Jerry Beebe
Above is an Anniversary video made in 2010 that is sung by Ernie Hause and Signature Sounds.
Yesterday we were able to spend the day at Silverwood Theme Park. It has been a tradition that dates back to 1989 I believe. This is the 30th Anniversary of Silverwood- lots of changes over the years and some rides have disappeared as well as lots of new ones.
30 years ago. Yes, that is Darcie and Jeremy.where does time go?
On May 11th, 2018 we drove 13 hours to Carson City Nevada to visit Jan's sister, Marian. We visited Reno strip and the North American Auto Museum as well as doing the Moms on the Run walk in memory of those lost to Cancer. It was my first visit to Virginia City on Sunday. We saw the oldest settlement in Nevada called Genoa and even visited South Lake Tahoe. We managed to find time to play Uno and Jan's sister, Marian, really spoiled us. We drove down hwy 97 and came back via 395 on Wednesday, the 16th- my favorite route is 97.
Some of the songs I debated on what to use for video were; The Gambler, Little Sister, Travelin Man, I get Around- but finally decided on a song from 1921 (87 years ago) sung by Billy Murray called On My Way To Reno. We really have a good marriage so please ignore the lyrics and his use of the "D" word- It was the best Little Vacation we had this year. And I will answer the question for you- No we did not spend any money gambling- but we are going to play Bingo tonight for fun at church?
These are wild Horses along the road
The North American Car Museum in Reno,
was one of my favorites
Even Managed to see Lake Tahoe on Tuesday the 15th of May
Why Do Kids Grow Up is a 1963 hit by Randy and the Rainbows, a American doo-wop group from Maspeth, New York. I added a few photos of my grandson, Billy to show how fast he has grown in one year as well as to remember the year, he was 4 years old. On April 26th-2018, Billy will turn 5- but I will hold onto those memories we had while he was 4 and looking forward to new memories. Happy Birthday Billy and may you have many more happy memories
Our grandson Billy turned 4 on 4-26-17, while we were on our cruise. We missed his party but put this video together for his 4th Birthday. It has mostly photos from his 3rd birthday to his 4th birthday. The other day he said he is almost 5 now- I think he is growing up too fast, and I am growing old too fast.
On April 20th, 2017 we left on a 17 day cruise through Panama Canal. It started in Miami, and ended in Seattle. With 3,000 people on board, you meet all kinds of people, hear all languages, and we experienced weather from 88 degrees with same humidity, to mid 40's- and even saw some rain. Passing through the Panama Canal was my favorite day. Getting home was a close second. (It teaches me to be thankful for our valley) Thanks Darcie for watching our house and "Mouse". Thanks Karen for watching our birds. Thanks to Mark and Maureen for taking us to and from airport. Thanks to my work for letting me have the time off and for Journey Travel and tours for finding us a low price. We took off for this cruise the same date we got home from our 2016 Hawaii cruise. This is our 7th cruise and 19 years ago we celebrated our 25th anniversary on our 1st cruise. This year I figured we would just stay home and tip every other stranger instead of a cruise.
Little Star was first recorded by the Elegants in 1958 and written by two members of the group. The music was adapted from "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I think most members of that group are still alive. Dion recorded the same song in 1993, which is the song I used in this video. Dion had 39 Top 40 hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a solo performer, with the Belmonts or with the Del Satins. I best remember him for the singles "Runaround Sue", and "The Wanderer", among his other hits.
Billy turns 5 next month and Its been almost a year since I made a video of him. Most of these photos were taken by his mom in the last year. I think I have 9 other videos of him and I think this is my 231st video posted on you tube that I have made as a hobby. My computer files show 11 Christmas videos, 14 of Dennis, 19 of Dennis/Janice, 12 of DuCette's, 46 of grandkids, 28 of Hendricks, 11 of Janice, 35 of Misc, 9 of safety, 26 of vacations, and 40 of work. Most of them can be found under label categories on the left side of this blog. Some do not want their pictures taken, and the hardest part is finding a song I have not used yet. Not everyone enjoys my style of music but I do not know of a grandpa who does not think his own grandchild is "The Star"
This weekend ends our winter shift in Wenatchee. This has been my 24th winter plowing snow with each one different and this one being very good. I work with some great people and they give us good equipment to work with that we take care of. Our two new trucks still have not arrived, but hopefully by next winter. Thank you for your patience and for slowing down for us this winter. I added a few photos of the winter- the winter went faster than this song I think. It will seem different not going to striping this summer, but remaining in Maintenance- I am looking forward to the challenge and hope you will "give us a Brake" when you see us working.
this was our winter crew- Eric was hired as 2115 and did
a great job- ok they all did a great job
I think this was the only snowman I built this winter-
winter went too fast and not much snow
Hard to get entire crew together,
this was our Christmas get together for area
I want to thank the Mechanics who did a super job as well
