Morning all:

“An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger.” — Dan Rather

Speaking of snobbish elitism, this week I spent several days near Bristol, Tennessee home of a major NASCAR race track. In addition, I spotted way too many pickup trucks sporting an “in memory of” decal to the late Dale Earnheart. Since I believe Formula I racing as being a ‘level above’, I thought it best to keep that bit to myself. Back to my coffee.

While in Tennessee I was invited and had the privilege of touring one of the top ten paper mills in the world. “Ho hum” you say. Let me explain that this nearly 100-year old mill has been rebuilt to world class status on its 250 acre site. It is so environmentally friendly that it resides smack in the heart of the town of Kingsport without presenting any difficulties. I hate to quote numbers since that is normally the surest way to put any early morning readers back in bed – but in this case? So, real quick, here goes:

– The paper machine is 50’ tall and is the length of 2 football fields
– Over the 550’ of the machine the paper starts out at 98% water and is transformed to 98% solid
– When they start a paper run it will spit out a 30’ wide swath of paper at 55 mph without stopping for 8 days straight – a length of paper reaching from here to Australia.
– Each 1:45 hour it completes a 30 ton roll of paper that when cut up generates 37,450 reams of beautiful white copy paper.

Ok, impressive though all this is, enough already.

Do any of you remember the wonderful game of Lawn Jarts? Back in the eighties it was the ‘must have’ yard game. All went well until the know-it-all do-gooders bent on protecting us from ourselves got together and managed to ban the game. I found ours carefully squirreled away for all these years.

Last Sunday Tevita, Adrianne and I had a great time playing, even on the rock-hard ground in our yard (due to our drought conditions). And no, the game did not stop because someone ended up with a Jart sticking out of their head. And, luckily for us, the Jarts police did not swoop in to stop the fun. Give me a call if you want to swing by and set up a Jarts tournament—I’ll buy the beer.

Just before leaving town I received word that the brand new Airbus A380 was going to do a fly-by over the General Electric Aircraft engine plant – they make the engines for this monster. For those who do not know, the A380 is a double-decker airplane which can seat over 500 people.

At 8 AM on Wednesday I was parked in the employee parking lot at GE. At first this behemoth aircraft did a distant pass about a mile high. It then turned and at near stall speed came over at less than 2000’, banking and doing wing dips. Seeing an airliner the size of a small cruise ship was more than amazing.

But, what really gave me goose bumps were the hundreds of employees who had gathered outside and who broke into spontaneous hand-clapping as the plane passed over. I guess that pride in one’s work is still alive and well.

Last night I made it back to the ‘Zincinnati in time to patrol with my Citizens on Patrol group. We walked from seven to nearly 9:30. With the ‘summer-in-October’ temperature hovering in the mid-eighties it did bring people out into the streets. While still at the Police precinct the radio crackled with a “shots fired” call about 5 blocks from our planned patrolling destination.

Warm weather brings plenty of opportunity to meet-n-greet the folk in the street. A little chatting with people near to an Ice Cream vending truck that sells much more than Ice Cream (wink wink) through a little window about 5 by 8 inches was interesting. I don’t know if this patrolling makes any difference, I just like to think it does.

I believe that many of the folk sitting on their stoops do value the fact that citizens volunteering to stop by and, if only for a moment, stop to talk. To let them know that there are people who want to bring a little stability to the neighborhood is appreciated. Having a police radio connected to the dispatch center is also useful.

Make it a great week. Whatever it is you do, this week, do it with a little extra effort.

Cheers,

Dirk