100 Words for a 100th Birthday

Wednesday, April 25, 2012 is our dad's 100th birthday. He married Adine in 1945. Daughter JoAnne arrived in 1948 and I showed up in 1954. In 1959 we moved into a home with a view on east bench of Bountiful. In 1963 dad died of cancer. We had nine wonderful years together. Mom died in 2010. I like to think they're together again. Meanwhile two more generations are on the scene. Grandsons Brandon Joseph Casey and Joseph Russell Finlinson carry on his good name. And he now has four great grandsons: Ethan and Ronan Casey, and Owen and Finn Hodgkinson.

Find a Grave, Revive a Blog

The older I get the more I appreciate obituaries and tributes to those who are no longer with us. A few months ago I re-discovered the Find a Grave website and was pleasantly surprised to find it contains photos and information on the following loved ones.

• Adine
• Joe
• My paternal grandparents, aunts and uncles
• Dee

Since landing there a few times, I decided to join up, so I've now got a little bio there and posted a couple of pictures I had to Adine's entry and some text to Dee's. While aggregating Dee's stuff in the great condo sale prep, I found the URL, login and password to his Dee's Believe It blog from 2004-2005. It was nice to read some of Dee's strong opinions again and I took the liberty putting in a link to his photo and Find a Grave info.

Failed, then Tried Again

ARUP blood services asked me to donate platelets a few years ago. They hooked me up to their machine, my blood pressure dropped within a few minutes and the donation came to premature end. My donor file was marked, "Whole Blood Only." But last week, as someone was combing through some database searching for the ideal platelet donor, my file emerged as one of the good matches for a particular need. ARUP called and asked me to try again.  This afternoon I did. The whole process worked smoothy. I wonder if they'll remove that "Whole Blood Only" designation from my record.

This Is Not Paul Gauguin's Tahiti

South Mountain Resort near Phoenix might 

stand-in for an island paradise, depending on your 

camera angle. I shot this on a business trip in 2007. 

I've never been to Tahiti but I certainly thought about it this morning as I listened to Susan Stamberg's NPR feature on the Paul Gauguin "Maker of Myth" exhibit of at the National Gallery.

A key element of the of the story is that the Tahitian imagery Gauguin conveyed in his paintings wasn't true to reality. "It's widely accepted that artists reinterpret reality, but the trouble is that Gauguin (1848-1903) insisted that his depictions of island life were true — factual representations of a serene, sensual, primitive place. The French tourist industry was something of a co-conspirator in this; it wanted tourists to travel to the Polynesian colonies," reports Stamberg.

Sgt. Pepper and Edna Adine

A Refreshing Take

A lot of conservative pundits have understandably applauded something that happened at that religious school south of Salt Lake recently, but here's a refreshing liberal take in support of the much discussed honor code and it's high profile enforcement.

Rooting for BYU's Sex Ban 
by Jonathan Zimmerman
http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/117785783.html?cmpid=15585797