Charity fund raiser
The last 12 days have been the most active of my recent social career. Saturday night was a fund raiser for my old High School and their band program. No, I wasn't in the band......back then you were a nerd if you were in the band. Not so anymore and the band program shows it. We have 300+ kids in the band. And I ruefully wish now, that I would have learned an instrument well enough to still be playing.

I started out in elementary school playing the drums, for about six months, until my Mother had had enough of that at home. She then suggested a much more sedate instrument, the flute. Really I was a natural at this, I apparently had the right genetic mouth and teeth alignment to pick up the this instrument readily. But alas, the Mother figure interceded again. After a year, I think she decided that this wasn't "manly" enough for me and might damage my self-esteem. Darn her......I was pretty good. So I moved on to the trombone for two years of junior high school, and was a mostly disinterested player, and where teenage social pressures made me give up on my muscial career. I did, however, teach myself to play the guitar later, at which I was moderately good.......and had the opportunity to play in front of 2000 people at my college musical festival [with back-up thank God].

The featured speaker at the gala charity event was our good friend Bruce Crandall who was portrayed by Greg Kinnear in the recent film We Were Soldiers. Shown above is Bruce with his lovely wife Arlene and Julie and me.