....lost a bunch while in Vegas last week. What a party that was!!!!

Went to Minnesota the next day (home from Vegas Sunday night, back at the airport Monday morning). Talk about cultural extremes, I went from the convention, 4 days of Vegas convention, to small town northern Minnesota for Independence Day, Cloquet to be exact. Went to a 4th of July parade that was mostly firetrucks, daycare cardboard floats and a few classic convertible cars, along with the usual representative service clubs. Cloquet's population is about 8,000 people, and if you weren't in the parade, you were lining the side walks watching it. It was gridlock getting into and away from a parking place, but it was also simple small town fun at its best. It was a real throw-back to small town Americana for me, mom and dad used to drag my little butt to these parades 45 or more years ago. I didn't appreciate them then as much as I should have. I re-met (met all over again) people that I met when I was just a kid. I couldn't believe how much they looked just like they did 30 or 40 or 50 years ago, and they couldn't believe that I'm catching up on them in that age deal.

The following days involved a real family reunion picnic at a cousin's home that borders Jay Cooke Park, a National Forest Park. A 2-mile hike right out of cousin Greg's backyard to the center of the north side of the park to the swinging bridge was a highlight, though this old man's puppies were sore when we got there. The picnic itself was a feast as well as a meet and greet kind of reunion. There were a number of direct relatives that I hadn't seen in 30 years. I was 23 then, and many of them are younger. It became apparent early on that I might need a scorecard to keep track of what has happened over the years. Some of my younger cousins are grandparents, and I was just meeting their kids for the first time! It was very cool! I'm a granduncle, and all three of my mom's brothers (two younger and one older -- mom died in 1983) were there and looking very good for great grand parents/great grand uncles!

I spent most of Thursday with my three sisters in Duluth. We had lunch with a cousin on my dad's side of the family (another young guy like me that I hadn't seen in 30 years). Went to Canal Park, skipped stones off the water in the bay of Lake Superior, and watched a couple very big ships pass through the canal under a street bridge that lifts into the air to get out of the way of big boats. Very cool!

How did I lose sleep during this vacation? I was checking in on this board every day. I saw the ongoing threads of personal attacks that began well before our convention, and it really bothered be. It still does. Disagreements are not something new to this forum. The recent animosity isn't disagreements, it is a string of personal attacks that have been escalating. There is really no good that comes from any of this, and if I'm thinking about it enough to lose sleep over it, that means that the people involved are not just my friends, they are friends to quite a few others. It needs to stop. ...and for those who might think this is a club issue, or the club is a mirror of what has been happening, I hope you will realize that isn't true.

So good to see my friends in Vegas, meet new friends, and meet friends I had only known from this place before. It was fun, almost too much fun, had to go hide in the woods of northern MN to recover....!

Back to work again,

Bob