Category: Family
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I’m 59 years old and I just got a tattoo
I never wanted a tattoo. It isn’t that I had anything against them. I remember seeing them as a kid. It wasn’t very often but some of them were pretty cool. But I never had a drive to get one. Until now…
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A Very Good Friday
It was a Good Friday. Both literally and figuratively. I was sure about the literal part as we were heading up North for Easter, and it was Friday, so, you know, Good Friday. The figurative part was going to depend on whether I could pull it off. Joyce and I had been dating for a…
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Laugh lines by age 40
Saw an ad on TV the other day for wrinkle removal. They called them crow’s feet or laugh lines. I’m not going to get into the larger women, appearance, society conversation as there are better posts by smarter people covering that topic. What I want to do is write in defense of laugh lines. First,…
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Childhood Books
Amazon threw a recommendation at me the other day: The Little House. It got me thinking about other books from my childhood. I bought most of them when my kids came along and read them many times all over again. Some of them are still on the shelves down in the basement. In no particular…
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Beer Can Collecting
This is a picture from the little history display at the Debuque Star Brewery. It brought back memories. I was a beer can collector in my early teens. It was fun and since I had no clue what beer was like, was the closest I could get. My friends and I would check out the…
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What is yet to pass…
Nothing like a graphical representation of every day of your life to put things in perspective… It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time. I’m now enjoying the last 5% of that time. We’re in the tail end. It’s a similar story…
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Home-made Marshmallows
My sister makes marshmallows for Christmas. Toasted coconut for me. Other lesser flavors for other people. I eat them slowly throughout the year. Leave a bag of store bought marshmallows on your shelf unopened for a month and you can pound nails with them. Leave my sister’s marshmallows in the cellophane bag tied with a…
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Built To Last (or How My Dad built something electronic that has lasted for 300,000 hours and still is running)
My dad (John Bredesen Sr.) had a career where he, among other things, built radio and television stations. The technical stuff. Transmitters and studios and really tall antenna. Took me about 3/4 of the way up one of his towers…1200 ft…gave me some serious willies. And he climbed them. Voluntarily. With safety harness, but still.…
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Another Dad/Cemetery article
Article about the cemetery that my Dad has been involved with for years.
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Eugene Masonic Cemetery (article quoting my dad, w/pic)
Here is an article about a regular music event at the cemetery. Been doing this for a couple of years and it is popular with musicians and audiences.
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Rainier – The Perfect Gentleman
This post was written in January 2012 after Rainier died. See this post for his last day. Rainier, April 1999 – January 2012 Dear Family & Friends, It is with a sad heart that I tell you that Rainier passed away last night. The vet believes
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Rainier – The Last Day
The below was written after Rainier died. Not very coherent or complete. The whole event happened in one evening. See this post for more about Rainier. We were heading out of town for the weekend so we dropped off Rainier at some good friend’s house. They have a couple of dogs that Rainier likes playing…