Two Hours from Leaving Home

I have been in a manic state, trying to think of everything that I may have forgotten. At the same time I am enjoying every instant of these busy last minutes. Dennis and I went to the French class reunion yesterday. Lynn and her husband have a gorgeous setting for a get together. Earlier Saturday I was stressing about a bread that I was making for the get together. I use the New York Times "No Kneed" Bread recipe. Look it up. Actually the stressful part was my improvisation. I saw a delicious looking loaf in my French cookbook (French Cuisine) - country bread with raisins and hazel nuts. I looked up the ingredients on line but as I told my wife today, I am not good at following directions. The difficult part was making sure that the dough was the right consistency and temperature for rising. I added the currents (soaked in VSOP Cognac) and hazelnuts last. It turned out well. So this is the close-up that I leave for your inspection.

Last night I was up late trying to send a mass email, ridding it of the misplace periods so I could actually send it out. I pulled my ipod out of my computer improperly and got a big grey apple on the screen. I thought that I had ruined for good. But I managed to look up a fix and it seems as good as new. Another mishap is that I locked my keys in my classroom. One might say that the lights are on but nobody is home.

So, bags almost packed- heavier than I would like. I plan to put together one more email list of my buddies in French class. I am listing to Russian tapes and typing this blog. Ya niyi punyimayo. Do you?

I remember why I stopped Blogging

See my most recent blog. My setting had me enabled for Hindi. Why, I do not know. But here is a preparatory blog. Preparatory to my trip overseas. With one week of finals left, Donna and I are leaving for London on an 11PM flight Sunday night. We spend five nights in London. Take the TGV to Paris for 6 nights to stay in an apartment on the Rive Gauche with my polyglot father-in-law (a true "bon pere"), Bill.

I am off on my own to Helsinki, Russia (for 20 days), Latvia, Poland and the Czech Republic. I will try to keep connected. If you want to read about it just post a link to this blog-

Attached is a photo of me and my boys.

इ सुद्देंली रेमेम्बेर वही इ स्तोप्पेद पोस्टिंग

My Election Predictions

The Financial Crisis

We are hearing now that we are in the middle of a financial crisis. Frankly I'm a little bit scared. I have a little in my savings account that I have started taking out in chunks of cash. One might call it my little run on the bank. My bank of all banks is Citibank- a corrupt participant in just about every scandal that has arrisen in the last ten years, beginning with Enron.  I am afraid that I always think of the worst case scenereo.  I have my retirement invested in who knows where, plus a small investment account that I have had for the past 5 years, soccing away about $400 per month. I have been trying to save for my children's education in a Smith-Barney "who knows what".  I work in a wealthy cheap-skate state that needs a two thirds vote to pass the budget. What were they thinking? These guys are responsible for my paycheck. 

Banks have no money to lend because they are up to their ear in debt with no collateral. Naturally they must close. But dire predictions before the collapse create a run on banks (again). Government bails out as many of these institutions as they can, at a cost of $700 billion (and then some).  But I have my little pile of cash that I have pulled out. Government prints lots more money to try and deal with this massive debt. Massive inflation necessarily ensues.  The dollar bill, already suffering from international scoffing, can now buy the equivalent of penny candy.  Remember Germany in the 1920's (or Zimbabwe in 2008). So we must bring our wheel barrow to the Supermarket, filled with relatively worthless U.S. dollars to buy some bread and milk for maybe $700.  Only seven one hundred dollar bills. A wheel barrow would hardly be necessary. 

Just jailing those responsible would put another burden on the government. I say that we should put them in work/ reeducation camps. We can help them learn how to earn an honest day's living with an honest day's pay.  mmmm... I feel myself getting a little power hungry. Whose footsteps can I follow in? Napoleon, Mussolini, George Bush's? 

Placed this Clustrmap on September 2, 2008

John E. Lynch

I have just started teaching again after a wonderful relaxing and musical summer. I have had two difficult years and there are many reasons why they were difficult. Some reasons were due to my own inadequacies but some due to circumstances beyond my control. I have been moved back to the English Department after five years away. I am determined to make this a good year. I have come up with a few new strategies and two days in seem to be working fine. If you know anything about teaching, on the first days the students are very well behaved. We shall see. Perhaps I will discuss the situation in a later blog. Suffice it to say that we have a forward thinking, seemingly competent, new, young principal. I am teaching in a department that gives me a lot of help and support. It should be a good year.

My real reason for writing today is that next Sunday there is a memorial service for my much beloved Uncle John and Aunt Phyllis. John died in 2001 but Phyllis died just this past February after suffering serious dementia beginning the day John died. The memorial service is in Phyllis's home town of Burnside, Illinois. Unfortunately the beginning of school prevents me from being there. Terry, Phyllis's nephew and my partner in taking care of the trust for these seven years asked me to write a obituary for John. I thought that I might also post it here, as well as having it read at the ceremony.

John Lynch: July 14, 1914- June 12, 2001


I remember…

John was born in Philadelphia, in 1914 oldest of 4 brothers and one sister. Also in the house lived his generous mother, his scrappy father and his Irish grandmother. John dropped out of school at 15, because of his father’s work disability and delivered packages on his bicycle for Adam’s Express.

In 1937, John and three of his friends, Charley Grodson, Bill Winters, and Jim Kelly, rented a studio in downtown Philadelphia at 1109 Walnut Street. The four attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Art, 1937 and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1938 and also took classes at the Barnes Foundation.

John was drafted into the Army in October, 1941. He was an artillery site calculator for the 30th Infantry and entered Europe through Normandy in the D-day invasion. He was an avid sketcher of the French and German countryside. He also painted some watercolors of some of his fellow GI’s. He was one of the first American soldiers to see some of the German Concentration Camps.

John went to Bradley College in Peoria after the war to join a friend, and made many more. He took advantage of the situation in the summer of 1946 when he and Phyllis Pope were the only two of a group left on campus during a vacation.

John and Phyllis, as newly weds, went to San Miguel Mexico on the GI Bill, but had to leave when the U.S. government withdrew funds because of a teacher’s strike.

In 1950 John and Phyllis moved to San Francisco briefly, then rented a home on a creek in Larkspur. A year later John bought a small lot on that same creek, designed and built a house with the help of Phyllis and many other friends.

John continued to draw and paint through the 1950’s, 1960’s, 1970’s and 1980’s while working a “day job” researching land titles for Western Title Company in San Rafael, California. He enjoyed some prominence as a painter in Marin County, as president of the Marin Society of Artists, teacher at the College of Marin and President and Archivist for the Arkites Association. Their little house was for many years the center of the “Boardwalk” celebrations and the place to go for a sympathetic ear, a few jokes, maybe a drink and certainly a good story or two.

Their home was a welcoming refuge for teenagers from the Midwest and East Coast in the late 60’s and early 70’s. Nephew, Ed moved West in the Spring of 1978. Both John and Phyllis were his family, his counselors and the center of every holiday celebration- Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, Fourth of July and a few others. They welcomed, always warmly, first a line of girlfriends, then his wife, Donna, his son Truckee, his daughter Anna and his other son, Joey.

I will remember John’s warm welcome, his brilliance, his stories, his jokes and his kindness.

John Lynch died in his sleep on June 12, 2001- the date of his and Phyllis’s 54th wedding anniversary.

May they both be happily remembered.