Random Thoughts From Marybeth

Oeration Shoe Fly

Sgt Hook is collecting shoes for Afghani children.

Thumbs Up

Yesterday, Ronald Reagan's children shared memories of their father that were both touching and humorous.

In Ron Reagan Jr.'s eulogy yesterday he spoke of his father's optimism.

He was, as you know, a famously optimistic man. Sometimes such optimism leads you to see the world as you wish it were as opposed to how it really is. At a certain point in his presidency, Dad decided he was going to revive the thumbs-up gesture. So he went all over the country, of course, giving everybody the thumbs up.

Doria (Ron Reagan Jr.'s wife) and I found ourselves in the presidential limousine one day returning from some big event. My mother was there and Dad was, of course, thumbs-upping the crowd along the way, and suddenly, looming in the window on his side of the car, was this snarling face. This fellow was reviving an entirely different hand gesture. And hoisted an entirely different digit in our direction. Dad saw this and without missing a beat turned to us and said, "You see? I think it's catching on."

It's time to try to revive this gesture again. If you see a friend, give him the thumbs up. If you see someone with a bumpersticker that shows support of our troops or President Bush, give him the thumbs up. See someone doing a good job? Give him the thumbs up. Look for ways to show your optimism and faith in our country by giving the thumbs up. It is a nice way to honor the memory of a great president...and it will really piss off those pessimistic other guys who prefer that "entirely different hand gesture".

Michael Reagan

Good evening. I'm Mike Reagan. You knew my father as governor, as president. But I knew him as dad. I want to tell you a little bit about my dad. A little bit about Cameron and Ashley's grandfather because not a whole lot is ever spoken about that side of Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan adopted me into his family 1945. I was a chosen one. I was the lucky one. And all of his years, he never mentioned that I was adopted either behind my back or in front of me. I was his son, Michael Edward Reagan.

When his families grew to be two families, he didn't walk away from the one to go to the other. But he became a father to both. To Patti and then Ronnie, but always to Maureen, my sister, and myself.

We looked forward to those Saturday mornings when he would pick us up, sitting on the curve on Beverly Glen as his car would turn the corner from Sunset Boulevard and we would get in and ride to his ranch and play games and he would always make sure it ended up a tie.

We would swim and we would ride horses or we'd just watch him cut firewood. We would be in awe of our father. As years went by and I became older and found a woman I would marry, Colleen, he sent me a letter about marriage and how important it was to be faithful to the woman you love with a P.S.: You'll never get in trouble if you say I love you at least once a day, and I'm sure he told Nancy every day "I love you" as I tell Colleen.

He also sent letters to his grandchildren. He wasn't able to be the grandfather that many of you are able to be because of the job that he had. And so he would write letters. He sent one letter to Cameron, said: "Cameron, some guy got $10,000 for my signature. Maybe this letter will help you pay for your college education. He signed it, Grandpa. P.S. Your grandpa is the 40th president of the United States, Ronald Reagan. He just signed his sign."

Those are the kinds of things my father did.

At the early onset of Alzheimer's disease, my father and I would tell each other we loved each other and we would give each other a hug. As the years went by and he could no longer verbalize my name, he recognized me as the man who hugged him. So when I would walk into the house, he would be there in his chair opening up his arms for that hug, hello, and the hug goodbye. It was a blessing truly brought on by God.

We had wonderful blessings of that nature. Wonderful, wonderful blessings that my father gave to me each and every day of my life.

I was so proud to have the Reagan name and to be Ronald Reagan's son. What a great honor. He gave me a lot of gifts as a child. Gave me a horse. Gave me a car. Gave me a lot of things. But there's a gift he gave me that I think is wonderful for every father to give every son.

Last Saturday, when my father opened his eyes for the last time, and visualized Nancy and gave her such a wonderful, wonderful gift.

When he closed his eyes, that's when I realized the gift that he gave to me, the gift that he was going to be with his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He had, back in 1988 on a flight from Washington, D.C. to Point Mugu, told me about his love of God, his love of Christ as his Savior. I didn't know then what it all meant. But I certainly, certainly know now.

I can't think of a better gift for a father to give a son. And I hope to honor my father by giving my son Cameron and my daughter Ashley that very same gift he gave to me.

Knowing where he is this very moment, this very day, that he is in Heaven, and I can only promise my father this. Dad, when I go, I will go to Heaven, too. And you and I and my sister, Maureen, that went before us, we will dance with the heavenly host of angels before the presence of God. We will do it melanoma and Alzheimer's free. Thank you for letting me share my father, Ronald Wilson Reagan.

Ronald Reagan Jr.

He is home now. He is free. In his final letter to the American people, Dad wrote, "I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life." This evening, he has arrived.

History will record his worth as a leader. We here have long since measured his worth as a man. Honest, compassionate, graceful, brave. He was the most plainly decent man you could ever hope to meet.

He used to say, "A gentleman always does the kind thing." And he was a gentleman in the truest sense of the word. A gentle man.

Big as he was, he never tried to make anyone feel small. Powerful as he became, he never took advantage of those who were weaker. Strength, he believed, was never more admirable than when it was applied with restraint. Shopkeeper, doorman, king or queen, it made no difference, Dad treated everyone with the same unfailing courtesy. Acknowledging the innate dignity in us all.

The idea that all people are created equal was more than mere words on a page, it was how he lived his life. And he lived a good, long life. The kind of life good men lead. But I guess I'm just telling you things you already know.

Here's something you may not know, a little Ronald Reagan trivia for you, his entire life, Dad had an inordinate fondness for earlobes. Even as a boy, back in Dixon, Ill., hanging out on a street corner with his friends, they knew that if they were standing next to Dutch, sooner or later, he was going to reach over and grab hold of their lobe, give it a workout there. Sitting on his lap watching TV as a kid, same story. He would have hold of my ear lobe. I'm surprised I have any lobes left after all of that.

And you didn't have to be a kid to enjoy that sort of treatment. Serving in the Screen Actors Guild with his great friend William Holden, the actor, best man at his wedding, Bill got used to it. They would be there at the meetings, and Dad would have hold of his earlobe. There they'd be, some tense labor negotiation, two big Hollywood movie stars, hand in earlobe.

He was, as you know, a famously optimistic man. Sometimes such optimism leads you to see the world as you wish it were as opposed to how it really is. At a certain point in his presidency, Dad decided he was going to revive the thumbs-up gesture. So he went all over the country, of course, giving everybody the thumbs up.

Doria (Ron Reagan Jr.'s wife) and I found ourselves in the presidential limousine one day returning from some big event. My mother was there and Dad was, of course, thumbs-upping the crowd along the way, and suddenly, looming in the window on his side of the car, was this snarling face. This fellow was reviving an entirely different hand gesture. And hoisted an entirely different digit in our direction. Dad saw this and without missing a beat turned to us and said, "You see? I think it's catching on."

Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man. But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage. True, after he was shot and nearly killed early in his presidency, he came to believe that God had spared him in order that he might do good. But he accepted that as a responsibility, not a mandate. And there is a profound difference.

Humble as he was, he never would have assumed a free pass to heaven. But in his heart of hearts, I suspect he felt he would be welcome there. And so he is home. He is free.

Those of us who knew him well will have no trouble imagining his paradise. Golden fields will spread beneath a blue dome of a western sky. Live oaks will shadow the rolling hillsides. And someplace, flowing from years long past, a river will wind toward the sea. Across those fields, he will ride a gray mare he calls Nancy D. They will sail over jumps he has built with his own hands. He will, at the river, carry him over the shining stones. He will rest in the shade of the trees.

Our cares are no longer his. We meet him now only in memory. But we will join him soon enough. All of us. When we are home. When we are free.

Patti Davis

Many years ago, my father decided to write down his reflections about death, specifically his own, and how he would want people to feel about it. He chose to write down the first verse of an Alfred Lord Tennyson poem, "Crossing The Bar," and then he decided to add a couple lines of his own. I don't think Tennyson will mind. In fact, they've probably already discussed it by now.

Tennyson wrote: "Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea."

My father added: "We have God's promise that I have gone on to a better world, where there is no pain or sorrow. Bring comfort to those who may mourn my going."

My father never feared death, he never saw it as an ending. When I was a child, he took me out into a field at our ranch after one of the Malibu fires had swept through. I was very small and the field looked huge and lifeless, but he bent down and showed me how tiny new green shoots were peeking up out of the ashes just weeks after the fire had come through. "You see," he said, "new life always comes out of death. It looks like nothing could ever grow in this field again, but things do."

He was the one who generously offered funeral services for my goldfish on the morning of its demise. We went out into the garden and we dug a tiny grave with a teaspoon and he took two twigs and lashed them together with twine and formed a cross as a marker for the grave. And then he gave a beautiful eulogy.

He told me that my fish was swimming in the clear blue waters in heaven and he would never tire and he would never get hungry and he would never be in any danger and he could swim as far and wide as he wanted and he never had to stop, because the river went on forever. He was free.

When we went back inside and I looked at my remaining goldfish in their aquarium with their pink plastic castle and their colored rocks, I suggested that perhaps we should kill the others so they could also go to that clear blue river and be free.

He then took more time out of his morning -- I'm sure he actually did have other things to do that day -- and patiently explained to me that in God's time, the other fish would go there, as well. In God's time, we would all be taken home. And even though it sometimes seemed a mystery, we were just asked to trust that God's time was right and wise.

I don't know why Alzheimer's was allowed to steal so much of my father -- sorry -- Before releasing him into the arms of death, but I know that at his last moment, when he opened his eyes, eyes that had not opened for many, many days and looked at my mother, he showed us that neither disease nor death can conquer love.

He may have in his lifetime come across a small book called "Peace of Mind," by Joshua Loth Lieberman. If he did, I think he would have been struck by these lines: "Then for each one of us, the moment comes when the great nurse, death, takes man, the child, by the hand and quietly says, 'It's time to go home, night is coming. It is your bedtime, child of Earth.' "

Spam Emails

One email I got told me:

1.The size of the banner is very heavy.
2.The rotation and geotargeting is not good.

We would like to recommend two very feature rich banner tools.
PLease (sic) try them and improve the revenue earning stream of your site.

The site doesn't have a banner. It doesn't have any advertising at all.

Another email had a link to Share Your Experiences. It said, "Someone who knows you is attempting to share experiences and opinions about you in our online community.

The purpose of this email is to inform you that a posting has been made about you at our website. This is email is not commercial in nature.

If this email message was delivered to your spam or bulk email folder please notify your ISP or spam filtering company regarding this mistake on their part." (At least this last line shows they have a sense of humor.)

According to the site, member #M00491032 has information about me. He/she claims to know me socially and that the experience they wish to tell about happened in the last year.

This seemed odd because anyone who knew me socially would probably not know that email address. That, and the fact that I can't think of anyone I've socialized with in the past year...unless video game characters have gotten Internet access. Yes, my social life is that pathetic.

According to this site, it's a scam that is trying to trick people into paying for premium services from the site.

Shame on you, John Torrey (john.torrey@shareyourexperiences.com) of 2711 Centerville Rd., Suite 120, Wilmington, Delaware 19808 (Phone: +1 (516)2148365).

Shame on you too, Pedre Nieto of A+Hosting, 302 E. Carson St., Suite 100, Las Vegas, NV 89101 (sysadmin-level1@aplushosting.com).

Family Time

Tuesday was the last day of school. This made the kids very happy. I have mixed feelings about it. The good part is that I don't have to get up early to get them ready for school or go pick them up in the afternoon. We also have more time to do things together (when I can pry them away from the video games.)

The bad part is that all that togetherness usually leads to bickering. I'll also miss my alone-at-home time.

This week Emma has been taking swimming lessons at the Oldham County YMCA. It's a short one-week course that covers the different strokes with an emphasis on water safety. I thought it would be a good class to have before she goes to camp.

Conor and Emma are going to Camp Piomingo on the 20th. Emma will only be staying for three days and Conor will be there for a week. I told Jeff that this is my Father's Day present to him, getting rid of a couple of the kids for a few days. This will be the longest that either of them has been away from home without me. I picked a camp close to home that had short sessions because even though I joke about getting rid of them I'm not sure how well I'll handle being without them I worried that they would become homesick if they were gone too long. If they do well and enjoy camp and I don't suffer too much from the separation, we'll look into something longer next summer.

Sometimes I feel bad that I couldn't afford things like this for Trevor when he was their age. He doesn't seem to mind though. He probably thinks that being home without his brother and sister for a few days is a pretty good deal.

Yesterday the kids and I went to see Shrek2. (Jeff didn't come with us. He had the day off but had a dentist appointment.) I really enjoyed the movie. I think the story in the first one was better, but the second is still very good.

After the movie we went to Target where I got the 20th anniversary edition of Trivial Pursuit. I'm looking forward to beating everyone around here unmercifully and showing them who is the Queen of Trivia playing this with the family. I can't remember what day of the week it is, but for some reason I have a good memory for useless trivia so I usually do well with this game.

Yesterday evening Trevor went to a youth group meeting at the Crestwood Baptist Church. (We aren't members of that church but several of his friends from school go there.) It was raining when I dropped him off so when he called for me to pick him up I wasn't too surprised that he asked me to bring towels. They had played some game outside and the boy was soaking wet and very muddy. He claimed to have washed most of the mud off...but looking at him, that was hard to believe. At least he was having fun and doing something besides sitting on his butt playing XBox or GameCube.

SOTM

The JoeAnt Site of the Month, Editor-Owned SOTM, and Blog of the Month have been listed on the index page since this weekend. (Thanks, Hugo, for the suggestion for Editor-Owned SOTM.)

For me, getting this done before mid-month is a real accomplishment. I didn't get it done at all last month. One day I'll surprise everyone and have it done on time.

I'll probably be the most surprised of all.

Looking for Words

Quotations and Proverb Finder

Search by keyword using a wide choice of sources from quote databases to song lyrics. There are also links to the sources if you prefer to browse for quotations.

How to Win an Argument

One of the tips for winning arguments is, You should also memorize some Latin abbreviations such as "Q.E.D.," "e.g.," and "i.e." These are all short for "I speak Latin, and you do not."

I've read online arguments where it looked like one person was following the advice given here.

Birdstone Beats Smarty Jones

Birdstone won the Belmont. Smarty Jones had a four length lead at the top of the stretch but Birdstone caught up and managed to pull ahead during the last seconds of the race. This is trainer Nick Zito's first Belmont Stakes win.

Before the race a commentator said that one man had bought 6,000 $2 win tickets on Smarty Jones. Those would have sold well later had he won....

A win ticket on Birdstone paid $74.

President Reagan Dies

Ronald Reagan died today. In one way we lost him years ago when his Alzheimer's became severe. Then again, he will continue to live on in every American who Reagan showed that it's okay to feel patriotic about this country.

Thank you, President Reagan, for everything you gave us. Thank you, Mrs. Reagan, for the care and dedication you have shown to your husband, especially during these last few years. May God continue to give you strength and grant comfort to you and your family.

Random Stuff

Yesterday we didn't have a thunderstorm or tornado warnings. I think it was the only day other than last Friday in over a week where we haven't had the threat of severe weather.

The threat of very naughty cats has remained constant.

Tonight is Conor's fifth-grade graduation. Trevor and Emma are both complaining about going to the graduation ceremony. All the kids complain about going to any event that another one of them is part of...as an only child, I used to be surprised by the lack of support they show each other. All I had known about how siblings act was based on having watched The Waltons. Perhaps this was a mistake.

Next year I will have one child in elementary school, one in middle school, and one in high school. I can't begin to describe the joy I feel at the thought of belonging to three different PTAs and trying to keep track of events at three different schools.

Yesterday we went to the middle school so Conor could sign up for band. He has choosen to play the saxaphone. He insists on calling it the saxamaphone...someone is watching The Simpsons too much. Speaking of The Simpsons, if that show had been on when I was younger, my idea of how siblings behaved would have been much closer to reality although I may have remained childless.