Life is full of surprises. My favorites are when you learn something rather special about someone you knew long ago...just one of those simple "oh, wow!" moments.
Yesterday I was chatting with a friend on Facebook about the school we attended in the early 70s. I dug out some old photos from the era and sent them to her. She then relayed an interesting tidbit.
The woman you see pictured below on the left was one of my teachers in junior high. I took that picture of her in May of 1974. Two years earlier she had given birth to the woman on the right.
The daughter's name is Laura Day, and it seems she went on to make quite a life for herself, including a national television debut as a designer on Trading Spaces.
Laura's journey from Southeast Arkansas to Manhattan has been filled with interesting twists and turns. She was born on August 28, 1972 in Pine Bluff, Arkansas and was raised in nearby Dumas (farm country of the Arkansas Delta), later moving to Little Rock. Growing up, she rode horses and spent most of her time outdoors. Laura has traveled extensively through Europe and Asia and lived in many U.S cities like San Francisco, New Orleans, Martha's Vineyard and, of course, New York City. You'll find traces of the places she loves in her colorful and unusual takes on design.
Very cool.
By the way, that triangular arm you see on the left happens to be attached to my mother.
Some of you may have seen this before but I just ran across it this morning. And I'm fascinated by such bits of trivia.
They're Nick and Bobbi Ercoline of the northern Orange County hamlet of Pine Bush. She's a 59-year-old nurse at Pine Bush Elementary School who collects food and clothes for needy children. He's a 60-year-old retired business agent for a carpenter's union who does lead and farm worker housing inspections for Orange County. The parents of two sons — Matthew, 30, and Luke, 27 — live in a 10-room home on a wooded road dotted with old farms and new houses. An American flag, a statue of the Virgin Mary and a tongue-in-cheek "Hippies Use Back Door" sign greet visitors out front. The famous photo hangs on a wall in a kitchen with shiny wood floors and black granite countertops.
There are two things I miss about going downtown to work: the people and Whole Foods being across the street from the agency where I worked. As for the people, well I've got the best of that lot as friends on Facebook. Not quite the same as seeing them everyday but it works.
No longer having easy access to Whole Foods is a pain sometimes. And I'll bet they miss me too.
In 2007 when I worked for almost 11 months of the year downtown, I spent $1,740.14 there.
Contrast that with 2008 when I only worked downtown for less than 10 weeks and spent $303.46.
And in 2009 so far? $0.00
And several hundred people were laid off from the agency in 2007. That's gotta hurt.
Each dot represents the lost life of a soldier in Iraq. Each dot represents a name, a face, a family filled with sadness, a lost future, a sacrifice, and for what?
Each dot also represents at least 8 wounded in action, and that number is probably very low. It could easily be 16 or more. Many of those lives are forever changed as they learn to cope with lost senses we all take for granted -- the lost of vision, hearing, one or more limbs, or a plethora of mental health issues.
Each dot represents at least 300 Iraqis who have died as a result of the US invasion. Again, 300 names, faces and families destroyed for each dot.
Lastly, each dot represents $126 million dollars based on the most conservative Pentagon figures of the war's cost. If you believe as I do that the true cost of the war is already at $1 trillion if not on the verge of $2 trillion, then each dot represents about $250 million to $500 million -- that's half a billion dollars per dot for those of you more accustomed to dealing with three and four-digit sums of money on a routine basis.
It seems that every other day the wind here is howling. And it's much worse if I leave our house which is nestled in a small valley and get out in an open area. Austin seems excessively windy to me so I decided to do a bit of research and see how we rank.
Much to my surprise, Austin isn't even listed in the top 101 windiest cities with a population of 50,000 or more. Click the map to see the full list.
This website is amazing and if you are a trivia fanatic for information similar to this, you have to check out the Top 101 Lists.
There's even a list of 101 cities with the most people taking a ferryboat to work.
