A former student saw this statute somewhere back east and thought it looked like me. I'm sure it is not, but if it had been me, then the little girl would have been my daughter, Edith.

Myron & Nancy sledding

These December, 2008, pictures of Nancy (my wife more than 50 years) and me sledding were taken by "Bart" Bartholomew, a 1980's CIS M.S. student, retired Army Colonel, and retired seventh-grade science teacher, using the Canon Powershot camera he bought after seeing Nancy's, which she bought after Omner (our older son) suggested it would be a good camera for her!

Myron Sledding on an American Flyer sled, with Nancy silhouetted against the skyline.

Nancy Sledding (and hollering)
"Do I hafta fall off to stop this thing?"

Click here to see a MOVIE (with soundtrack and taken with the same camera) of us sledding!

(WARNING: it's kinda big! Even with DSL, our computer had to "buffer" several minutes before playing the movie.)

The Apple Core-Tet

The Apple Core [pause] Tet, a "registered" SPEBSQSA (Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America) quartet, singing at some 2003 Christmas "gig". "SPEBSQSA", a lampoon on President Roosevelt's New-Deal alphabet agencies, was renamed to "Barbershop Harmony Society" (BHS) in 2004):

From left to right:
TENOR: Myron, long-retired KSU engineering professor,
LEAD: Bill Hanson (now deceased)
BASS: Leonard Purvis, retired public-school principal, and
BARI: Bob Ridley, retired KSU vet-school professor.

Unfortunately, our LEAD died and we couldn't find another, so, after 22 years of singing, the Apple Core-Tet was no more.

The day my quartet died is "The Day the Music Died" ("American Pie", by Don McLean) for me, and I dropped my membership in SPEBSQSA for a few years!-(

However, we have now found a new LEAD and the Apple Core-Tet is singing again!

There's a story about this next set of pictures.

Nancy and I were attending Colorado State University when we married, and, when our now-grown-and-flown kids were young, we occasionally camped in Pingree Park, a beautiful mountain valley about 50 miles west of Fort Collins and within sight of Rocky Mountain National Park, the Comanche Peak Wilderness Area, and Roosevelt National Forest. CSU has a Pingree Park Campus and Conference Center and, for several years, Nancy has enjoyed playing her bassoon at an Elderhostel "Orchestra of the Rockies" which met there. While I may (try to) sing, I don't play a musical instrument, which means I had little reason to tag along with her, but she didn't want to drive out and back by herself, so we agreed I'd help her drive and, while she was having fun at "music camp", I'd "get lost" in the woods.

In 2007, I slept in a 4'x6' plastic backyard-type kid's tent and cooked on a metal folding table over a homemade alcohol stove -- but using gasoline because I accidentally took the wrong fuel can!-(

In 2008, I slept in a "real" (i.e., not plastic) 7'x7' tent (notice the generous increase in size!-) and -- having taken the right can -- cooked my one-pot meals with alcohol (a vast improvement over gasoline!.

However, I didn't like cooking outdoors, so I decided to make a tent to my own specifications. While building it, though, my power saw and I disagreed about what should be cut (my fingers or a tent-frame support), so, in 2009, Nancy flew/bussed to/from Pingree Park while I sat home and recuperated.

Finally, everything came together in 2010, and Nancy and some musically-inclined friends are on a before-breakfast walk to visit me in my 8'x15' greenhouse-plastic-over-wooden-frame "tent":

The chimney pipe from my cooking/heating wood stove (converted from a garage-sale meat smoker) that sticks up above and to the right of the door will be mentioned again in the second picture below.

Note my sleeping quarters (my 7'x7' "real" tent) behind the coat hanging on the right-hand side of the plastic tent.

I angled the stove's flue across the tent to "glean" as much heat as possible from the stove, but mostly that @!#$* pipe whacked me in the head every time I bent to crawl into bed!

I'm sorry Nancy didn't take a night-time picture, but my greenhouse-plastic tent really glowed at night when I was using a (battery-powered) electric light!

Nancy's friends walking back to the Conference Center for breakfast.

For computer nerds who have used several different editors.

The rear of our house on the UNIBEN (UNIversity of BENin) campus in Benin City, Nigeria, West Africa; the smaller building behind the water tank is the "boys quarters", the trees near the power pole are banana trees, and the fence to the right separates UNIBEN from the rest of the world. (The fence was raised by several feet while we were there, and the workmen ate all of our bananas, so we could truthfully say "Yes, we have no bananas!")

Somewhere near the above picture but outside the university wall. I think the two "stobs" sticking up are tops of a termite mound, but I didn't force my way through the jungle to verify my suspicions.

An example of the power of Kansas' winds!

And that's the end of this tour.

MISCELLANEOUS PICTURES

Myron & Nancy sledding

The Apple Core-Tet