Greetings loyal airmen.   With the advent of warm weather, flowers are beginning to bloom all over our back yard and in particular one variety we've been anxiously awaiting for ten years; our purple lilacs.   Ten years ago our oldest daughter, Michelle, and her family were leaving their apartment home in the nearby town of Berwick, ME, for their newly purchased home further north in the rural community of Lebanon, ME.  Before packing up to make the nine mile move, Michelle clipped 22 saplings from her healthy lilac bushes and brought them to me to transplant.   Valerie and I had hoped to make a buffer along the left side of our property, one that would eventually yield a very beautiful fragrance every Spring.  The thing is, once you've planted saplings, if they survive, it takes a full ten years before they actually bloom.  Thus over the last decade, every Spring, I would be out there adding fertilizer, plant food, whatever else to those thin, long sticks in hopes their roots would take hold and that some day they would indeed flower.  Well, over that time, we lost four of them, the ground is not the best on that side of the yard. But somehow, both through perserverance and dumb luck, 18 of them did take root and this year,  marking the tenth anniverseary of their going into the ground, several of them actually bloomed.  See picture above.

Watering these beautiful flowers the other day, I began musing at all the changes that have occured, both personally and nationally, since the time I first got down on my hands and knees and put them in the ground.  Wow.  The memories began to stack up and I was really taken aback by just how much can happen in just ten short years.  Some good and some bad.

In 1997 we had a Democratic President who just loved women.  All of them except his own wife.  Now, ten years later that same woman, whom he cheated on repeatedly and made a national joke and embarrassment is now campaigning for that same high office.  Have you ever wondered why she didn't divorce old Bill?  Although it would have shown her to be a woman of character, she feared it would hurt her political future.  Thus answering the question, which does Hilary Clinton put first in her life, her marriage and family, or her own ambitions.  I leave you to answer for yourselves.   It still amazes me that so many Americans put up with their “arrangement” as if it were an insignificant matter.   Of course, to be fair, George and Laura also have an arrangement of their own.  It's called mutual love and respect.   How old fashion of them!

Ten years ago there was no reality TV.  No SURVIVOR, a show predicated on the concept that if you lie and cheat in this world, you will win and be amply rewarded for your less than noble efforts.  Now there's an uplifting show!  And let's not forget AMERICAN IDOL, which allows people from all over the country to public humiliate themselves and ultimately becomes the biggest popularity contest ever conceived.  And here I thought I'd left that kind of juvenille mentality when I graduated from High School.  I would be lying if I said I've never seen either of these programs, whereas over the years, while surfing the channels, I have tripped over snippets of both.  Again, enough to know both are not worth my time.  Thus I can say, with some degree of pride, I have never watched a complete episode of either and have no plans to ever do so.

Ironically the digital revolution of the last ten years has provided us with a wonderful escape from today's mundane TV programming.   The DVD explosion has allowed studios to package and release old TV shows that we all grew up watching and enjoying.  Series with substance that we can now purchase and watch instead of the junk we are currently offered by the three major networks.  Who, by the way, are still scratching their heads at the steady decline in viewer numbers year after year.

Then again the same digital magic also brought us the cell-phone, something wonderfully missing from our lives in 1997.  Today I cannot drive one mile from home without seeing a passing driver with a plastic dohickey jammed in his or her ear as they attempt to navigate traffic.  What happened to the training manuels I had to adhere to when getting my drivers license lo those many years ago?  The one that stated a driver must give his or her full attention to the task at hand, driving the automobile!!   I consider it a miracle that every day hundreds of people aren't killed on our highways because of those things.  But give it time, now we're putting TVs in cars.  Duh! What's next, a mobile bar?

Ten years ago Valerie and I were still working and had yet to retire.  The subsequent years since we left the factory have truly been a blessing to us.  Ten years ago my play about how my Mom and Dad met and fell in love prior to World War II hadn't been produced.  The night it was, in 2002, was a truly joyous occassion for my mother and our entire family.  Ten years ago I hadn't started my new pulp career, and now I have ten volumes on my library shelf with my name on the credits.  With lots more to come.  Ten years ago only two of our five kids were married and we had only four grand kids.

      
Nine years ago Scott and Katie were married and today, we have six fantastic grand children, having added the two above, Taryn and Logan.  Making our lives that much happier.

Oh yeah, ten years goes by in the wink of any eye.  I was 50 then going, now I'm 60.  And I didn't have that tatoo that's on my left shoulder ten years ago.  What is it?  That's a story for another log, but I promise, I will tell it one day. One of my favorite songs from the musical, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, is Sunset-Sunrise.  The refrain goes, “Sunrise, sunset, quickly go the years, one season following another, laden with happiness and tears.”  Here's hoping the last ten years were filled with much happiness and only a few tears for all you airmen.

Ron – Over and Out.