Solicitations for Donations

Have you received mail similar to what I have gotten?  Several times a week I get mail solicitations for donations that contain money. Usually it is only a penny or a nickel, but sometimes there is a dollar bill paper clipped to the letter.

The March of Dimes sends--What else--a dime. It is quite obvious even without opening and reading the letter that the inclusion of money is a mental ploy to make me feel guilty if I don’t return something in the way of a donation.

Do these mind games work?  No, not for me they don’t.  I donate to several charities of my choosing, but I don’t give to any charity because of guilt. I give because I want to help and I believe in the cause. And when I get the coin or the dollar bill from a charity that I support, I’m more likely to stop sending them any donations than I am to send along money that they might waste on some other prospective donor.

Another ploy that is a turnoff for me is when I send a generous donation to a charity or some political candidate whom I believe in, only to receive a letter thanking me for my donation, which includes a new donation form and an envelope to send in yet another donation.

Do these people think I made a mistake and didn’t send enough the first time? That I said to myself, “Oh gosh, I only sent $100, and I really meant to send $1,000.”  I am tempted to quit sending any future donations to those groups that insult my intelligence by asking for another donation immediately upon receiving one from me.

In case you’re now wondering just how cold-hearted I am, I do send money to some non-profits like the USO three or four times a year, but I do it at the time of my choosing. If I get a mailer from one of my favorites, I usually save the return envelope and pledge card to be returned when I feel up to it.

My wife and I both drop paper money in the Salvation Army kettles during the Christmas season, too. And I’m not in any way bragging about it.  I just want to establish that I am not a Scrooge about donating. My point was to show my disdain for organizations that try to guilt me into it. Other than that, I wish everyone would donate to worthy causes and not just to “take it off on their taxes.”  Beginning this year with the new tax bill that avoided that nasty "fiscal cliff," high income earners aren't going to get to take charitable donations anyway.

How to forward Email Appropriately

  

A friend who is a computer expert received the following directly from a system administrator for a corporate system. It is an excellent message that ABSOLUTELY applies to ALL of us who send emails.

Do you really know how to forward e-mails? Most of us DO NOT know how.

Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail?

Do you hate it as much as I do?

Every time you forward an email there is information left over from the people who got the message before you, namely their e-mail addresses & names.  As the messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds, and builds, and builds, and all it takes is for some poor sap to get a virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to every email address that has come across his computer. Or, someone can take all of those addresses and sell them or send junk mail to them in the hopes that you will go to the site and he will make five cents for each hit. That's right, all of that inconvenience over a nickel!

How do you stop it? Well, there are several easy steps:

(1) When you forward an email, DELETE all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message (at the top). That's right, DELETE them.  Highlight them and delete them, backspace them, cut them, whatever you know how to do. It only takes a second. You MUST click the 'Forward' button first and then you will have full editing capabilities against the body and headers of the message. If you don't click the forward button first you won't have full editing functions. I particularly dislike having to scroll through 200 Email addresses before I get to the email.

(2) Whenever you send an email to more than one person, do NOT use the TO: or CC: fields for adding email addresses. Always use the BCC: (blind carbon copy) field for listing the e-mail addresses. This is the way the people you send to will only see their own e-mail address. This applies to all email, New, Reply and Forwards.  ALWAYS USE THE BCC: FIELD.  You don't have to put any addresses in the TO: or CC: fields in order to send the message.

If you don't see your BCC: option, click on the box marked TO: and your address list will appear. Highlight the addresses you want to forward to and choose BCC: and that's it, it's that easy. When you send to BCC: your message will automatically say 'Undisclosed Recipients' in the 'TO:' field of the people who receive it.  That way you aren't sharing all those addresses with every Tom, Dick or Harry.

(3) Remove any 'FW:' in the subject line. You can re-name the subject if you wish or even fix spelling. I often put a new title on the message just to get rid of  FW: or RE: and any other addendum that appears on the message I received.

This one is very important, so please read and heed

(4) ALWAYS use your Forward button from the actual screen you are reading.  Ever get those emails that you have to open 10 attachments to read the one page with the information on it? By Forwarding from the actual attachment you wish someone to view, you relieve them from having to open many attachments just to see what you sent. These are the ones that often end up having picked up a virus from somebody along the way.

To clarify, once you have gotten to the attachment window where the actual information is, click on the Forward button from there without closing pages back to the first one.  In the case of attachments where it is a video, or pictures, or any graphics, close the attachment and then immediately click on the Forward button. The attachment will still be on your forwarding email, and you can edit the body of the message before sending it.

NOTE: If your email attachments come up as a pop up screen with no menu bar, send me an email to that effect and I'll detail another way you can forward from the attachment message page.

(5) A message that has been forwarded several times will often have vertical blue lines along the left edge with the text or graphics moved to the right of those lines.  When that is the case, it is better to copy and paste only the part of that page you wish to forward in a new message.  It requires a few extra steps, but it is much neater and the message will appear to have been originated by you instead of forwarded.  Just highlight the text you wish to send, depress and hold ctrl+C, close the current message, start a new message and depress and hold ctrl+V to paste the text into the message body. Now you have a clean copy without any of those email addresses, vertical lines or other unwanted distractions.

(6) Have you ever gotten an email that is a petition? It states a position and asks you to add your name and address and to forward it to 10 or 15 people or your entire address book. The email can be forwarded on and on and can collect thousands of names and email addresses.

FACT: The completed petition is actually worth a couple of bucks to a professional spammer because of the wealth of valid names and email addresses contained therein. If you want to support the petition, send it as your own personal letter to the intended recipient. Your position may carry more weight as a personal letter than a laundry list of names and email address on a petition. (Actually, if you think about it, who is supposed to send the petition in to whatever cause it supports? Where do they send it? And don 't believe the ones that say that the email is being traced, it just isn’t so!)

(7) One of the worst offenders is the one that says something like, 'Send this email to 10 people and you'll see something great run across your screen.' Or, sometimes they'll just tease you by saying something really cute will happen.  IT ISN’T GONNA HAPPEN!!!!!  Trust me, I'm still seeing some of the same ones that I waited on 10 years ago!  I don't let the bad luck ones scare me either; they get trashed.

(8) Before you forward an Amber Alert, or a Virus Alert, or some of the other ones floating around nowadays, check them out.  Most of them are junk mail that's been circling the net for Years!  Most will be inaccurate or completely false.  Just about everything you receive in an email that is in question can be checked out at Snopes. Just go to http://www.snopes.com.  It’s really easy to find out if it is real or not. If it's not, please don't pass it on.

So please, in the future, let's stop the junk mail and the viruses.  Follow the eight steps above and clean ‘em up prior to forwarding.

Deadman Pass

A tour bus crashed through a guardrail on I-84 in eastern Oregon last Sunday.  I heard the news report and I knew exactly where the crash occurred. I have driven over that stretch of highway, sometimes called “the most dangerous road in Oregon.”

The first time I drove up to Deadman Pass on the western end of the Blue Mountains was in 2009.  I was in my little 2007 Ford Taurus and was tooling along at 65 mph on the wide-open interstate highway. (See map by clicking on the link)

As I approached the incline the highway divided and there were some warning signs that you usually see warning truckers to exercise caution and stay to the right hand lanes.  I, of course, ignored those warnings and kept my foot on the accelerator pedal.

The road got steeper and also had more curves.  I was suddenly in a sharp right turn that seemed to go on forever.  It is one of the only times I have ever felt like the car was going to roll over, yet I didn’t dare apply any brakes at that point in the curve. My heart rate was accelerating as I eased back on the gas pedal, and I was glad when I finally reached the straight road again.

I drove back over that same road the following year. Needless to say, I drove a lot slower the second time, especially since it was after dark and pitch black out there in rural Oregon.

On my way back to Portland I stopped at a scenic overlook up on Old Emigrant Hill Road and took the picture below looking west toward Pendleton, which is obscured by morning fog.  You can see the divided highway with some cars on it. What looks like three separate roads is actually only the two east and west lanes with some switchbacks.  In the far upper right side of the picture you can also see the joined interstate proceeding west.

Hint: You can depress and hold the ‘Ctrl’ key and move your scroll wheel on the mouse to enlarge or reduce the picture.

Interstate 84 follows the old track of the Oregon Trail most of the way across the state, so you can just imagine what the pioneers must have felt going down that steep slope in their wagons. I can’t imagine what it is like going down that grade in the winter or in the high winds common in that region.

If you ever get the chance to drive I-84 through eastern Oregon, make sure to visit the overlook and see the magnificent view from there without the morning mist.  Also, make certain to obey the speed signs and use a gear other than the overdrive one —the one with the circled D—on the hill.  Lower gears give better control so you won’t become a news story or statistic.

Morning Glory Clouds

Have you ever seen a roll cloud?

A roll cloud is a weather phenomenon that is rare and requires some very strange and specific atmospheric conditions to occur.  It is also called a Morning Glory Cloud, since the occurrence is almost always in the early morning. 

Roll clouds are somewhat common in Australia on the northern coast near the Gulf of Carpentaria and can occur in multiples, such as is shown in the picture below, which was taken from an airplane.  Arial viewing in best, because the clouds can stretch for up to 600 miles and are very low to the ground, mostly under 1,000 feet above the surface. 

I had the good fortune to see a Morning Glory cloud on a morning commute between Kansas City and Omaha back in 1982. I’m certain that it was a one-in-a million chance that I happened upon it. 

The roll cloud I saw was straight and stretched completely across my field of vision from west to east.  It was only a few hundred feet above the ground and was visible from one horizon to the other. It must have been many miles in length.  I wish I could show you a picture of it, but back in the day we didn’t have digital cameras built in to cell phones and such. 

I count my sighting of a Morning Glory Cloud as one of my Bucket List goals, even though it was mere happenstance that brought it to me.  I didn’t have to go all the way to Australia to see it.  Maybe you’ll see one too.

Summary of The Year 2012

The year is drawing to a close, and Christmas is only a few days away, so this will likely be the least read edition of my columns for 2012.  Therefore, I will use the space to publish my Second Annual Newsletter. 

Judy and I celebrated our 50^th wedding anniversary on June 9^th of this year.  No, we didn’t go on a Caribbean Cruise, and we didn’t have a party thrown by our kids.  As a matter of fact, we were on the road that day on one of our several trips.  We visited a Nevada State Park called Valley of Fire and drove across the new bridge at Hoover Dam. Then we stopped for the night at Kingman, Arizona and had a nice dinner at a Mexican restaurant.

While at Valley of Fire State Park I discovered a rock formation, which I (unofficially) named Star Gazer Hill.  It was my anniversary gift to myself.  I tried to get the park rangers to recognize the name officially, but they declined.  I guess they have enough named formations in the park and didn’t need another one.  Anyway, in case you missed it in an earlier email I sent out, here is a picture of Star Gazer Hill, which has at least eight rock faces gazing skyward, maybe even more.

The ‘faces’ of Star Gazer Hill revealed

Speaking of road trips, we made several this year.  In all, we traveled through 32 of the 50 states on seven separate trips.  We didn’t visit any new ones, and there are still two states—Alaska and North Dakota—to which I’ve never been.  If you read my road trip journals you’ll know that I love to travel and to share my journeys with everyone.

On one of our road trips we stopped for the night in Omaha and visited with our former neighbors and good friends, Rob and Karen.  We hadn’t seen them in many years, and it was great to break bread together and catch up.  We’ve since then kept in touch via the email circuit.  It’s so nice to renew friendships.

We lost one member of our family this year.  Judy’s mother passed away a few weeks ago on Judy’s birthday, so it was a sad day instead of a happy one.  Otherwise, our little family is doing fine, except for some strife in one branch, but I won’t discuss that since it I personal and not my business anyway.

My grandson, Chase, went into the Army in September of last year, 2011.  After sixteen weeks of boot camp he was unable to pass the PT requirements—not because he wasn’t strong enough, but because he was too tall.  It seems that people over six feet tall have a lot of trouble doing the pushups, and he never could get to the minimum number to pass. He was released from his obligation in January with some disappointment.  He is still unemployed, unfortunately, but then, there are a lot of folks in that position these days.

The conflicts that my singing hobby caused finally came to a head a few months ago, and I’ve decided to take a sabbatical from the Garden City Chorus.  I will stay with my barbershop quartet, but with limited engagements.  The Singing Valentines will still be on the agenda, as I really enjoy that activity.

That about sums up the year for me and I hope I didn’t bore you too much in the telling.

I truly wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

Interesting Reading or Listening

I usually listen to audio books while I’m on a road trip, and my recent one to Utah, Wyoming and Montana was no exception.  I listened to two books them and one of them, titled 90 minutes in Heaven really had an impact on me.  A Baptist minister wrote it.  He had been in a horrific traffic accident that rendered him lifeless for almost two hours.

I won’t spoil the book by telling you too much about it, as I encourage you to read or listen to it yourself.  I believe you will find it as fascinating as did.

As a result of listening to the book over the course of two days, along with some further urging by others with whom I shared the experience, I have begun to re-examine my wayward life

Those of you who have read my columns over the years may recall that I’ve had some very strange experiences with death and near death.  In fact, I claim to have been dead myself on at least two occasions, possibly three.  I didn’t see that tunnel of light, see my own body below me, or experience anything like Reverend Piper did, but there were some periods of time that were totally unaccounted for and not due to unconsciousness.

I was also visited in a dream by a close friend who had died less than 48 hours before. He even conversed with me about his death, assuring me that he was “at peace.”

Okay, enough of the esoteric.  I relate it to give some substance to my present state of mind.

I probably won’t let you in on the final decision I make to either accept or reject the supposed afterlife, but I promise not to ever proselytize.  I’m no preacher anyway, and certainly not a model for others.

If you want a good read, even if only for the medical history of a person who had 34 separate operations to put him back together again, or to learn what the Ilizarov apparatus is and how it works, try 90 Minutes in Heaven.

An Ilizarov apparatus in use

Simple Autumn Pleasures

 I live outside of Augusta in a community that is adjacent to the huge Army Post, Fort Gordon.  There are two events that take place every fall and winter on the post and both are well publicized locally. 

In the fall there is a cleanup of the autumn leaf fall and the refuse is burned over a period of a few days in late October or early November. After Christmas there is another gathering of all the Christmas trees that were erected at the fort and by the military living off post.  Once again, a large controlled burn takes place.

The smoke from these two fires can be seen for miles. If you happen to live downwind from the fort you can also smell that aroma of burning leaves and trees. It brings back childhood memories for me.

It amazes me that there are literally millions of people who have never smelled the aroma of burning leaves in the fall. I don’t know when the municipal ban of leaf burning took effect, but it must have been sometime back in the “politically correct” 1970s.

For those of you city-dwellers who have never experienced this, you don’t know what you’re missing.  It was an annual fall chore to rake the fallen leaves from all the trees on our property and pile them at the curb. 

When the pile was large enough—sometimes we had to rake and build several of them—the younger set usually played a game of diving into the pile to “smoosh it down.”  Of course, that necessitated re-raking and forming the pile anew, but the fun we had was worth the extra effort.

After all the shenanigans were completed, the next thing we did was to light the pile and burn the leaves.  It was all done with adult supervision, and I don’t recall anyone setting their property or their house afire.  And since most people on the street took part in this annual activity, it was common to have several leaf piles burning simultaneously up and down the street.

The neighborhood was always aromatic with that smell of burning leaves for about a week or more during the late fall, usually right around Halloween.

If you are one of those who missed out on the fall phenomenon of leaf burning, I feel badly for you.  Unless you happen upon a forest fire, now called wildfires for some strange reason, you’ll never know what I mean when I call the smell 'aromatic'.  I cannot provide you with the odor, but here is a picture of what the activity might have looked like back in the good old days. Notice that those are kids doing the raking and burning, and they’re doing a pretty good job of it too.

 

As a footnote, that leaf raking and leaf burning activity also provided a pretty good chore that the ambitious kids could use to earn some spending money.  There were always some people who were willing to pay a teen to perform the task for them, so it was one of the chores, along with lawn mowing and snow shoveling, that we could use to augment our allowances.  It’s too bad that today’s youngsters don’t seem to have that work ethic.