Dear Friends,

Linda accomplished what she wanted to do on Wednesday. I went off to visit dear old dad at the family home in Lee.
I had all intentions of visiting Mom at the nursing home on the way back to Pittsfield. Not!

Mom was taken to the hospital on Tuesday night. Her lungs were a mess, and they were treating her as if she had Pneumonia. She was all congested when I arrived at Berkshire Medical Center, and she was on oxygen. My sister and her daughter were there when I arrived, and said that Mom was much better compared to when she was admitted to the hospital on Tuesday evening. Well, I didn’t think so.
Mom’s target date for discharge back to the nursing home is tentatively set for Friday morning. Of course, Linda and I will be on the road to North Tewksbury if the discharge actually takes place. There always seems to be a crisis when we have travel plans. Oh Darn!

Speaking about taking care of parents, a family in the eastern part of the State of Massachusetts left their Grandma sitting in a recliner for over a month. The daughter, her husband, and three grown grandchildren have been arrested. It was so lucky that the woman is still alive. The description of her physical ailments, which she developed over the month of being in the recliner chair, was too awful to put in print!

Social Calendar -- Linda has a body maintenance procedure today as well as her monthly session of BONCO this evening.

I will be running errands as well as loading up our car with items which can assist Kevin and Kyla for their weekend party at their home in North Tewksbury. This sounds simple, but I am trying to guess what kind of items that they would need to pull off a trouble free party for over 60 people. If we lived closer, I could just drive back home if there was a particular item which was needed. Since we live 2.5 hours away, this is impossibility. I might have to enlist help from the Brodeur’s since they live once street away from Kevin and Kyla.

My comments about the war in Afghanistan generated a lot of discussion. Linda asked me not to bring up such things in my e-mail. She doesn’t like it when I “stir up the pot.” She didn’t want me to put our military son in an awkward position because his boss is the President of the United States. You saw what happened when General McCrystal made those comments. He is now retired from the military.

So to summarize yesterday’s discussion: Military people do feel that we are making progress in all the war torn areas in the Middle East. The military should be given all that is needed to win the war especially if this is not the case at the current time. My only thoughts from this perspective are that do we have the support from the people who we are protecting? We train the good guys in the Middle East, and then several of them go rogue, and kill our troops. The bad guys even kill their own people like the ones who were blown up while riding on a bus by a roadside bomb. Who are our real enemies?
We then have the perspective from some of my e-mail recipients who believe that killing people is no way to resolve conflicts. I am leaning toward this perspective, but I have also learned to be a bit more realistic. We in the United States haven’t learned anything from all the wars that we have been involved with over the past 200 years. We went to war with the British in the 1700’s to establish this great nation. We fought civil wars and killed one another to end slavery in the United States. We engaged ourselves in World Wars, Cold Wars, Vietnam, have seen nations split into two regions like in Germany (and eventually ended the split) and Korea (the split continues), we fought communism and had a semi success with a country like Russia realizing that communistic government doesn’t seem to work, we have China beating us up economically because they produce what the Americans used to produce, the Gulf conflict, etc. I guess war is a fact of life. Resolving conflicts by killing each other is the norm. I just think that this is so sad!

I just got back from Retro Fitness. It was quiet except for a person who was grunting while lifting huge weights. I am not a grunter. I don’t want to strain myself in the name of physical fitness.

I did watch the Red Sox game on Wednesday afternoon. They did win with a total of four homeruns, one of which is a grand slam. The Yankees won their game too!
I see where Terrell Owens has signed with the Cincinnati Bengals professional football team. I will see Terrell in action on the opening day in Foxboro as the Bengals go up against the Patriots. I can’t wait!

Weather – The humidity is leaving the Berkshires by the end of the day. We are going to be into my kind of summer weather for the next several days. Low humidity, cool nights, and day time temperatures in the 70’s will be the norm for 4 or 5 days.

Have a great Thursday.
I have to take a shower, and get to some chores.
Talk to you soon. The Curley Lad