Moving to the Front Row

Several years ago, Doe’s favorite aunt, Anna Marie passed away. At the funeral home on the night of the visitation, the row closest to the casket was occupied by the surviving siblings of the Owen family. They were the older generation. In the row behind were the sons and daughters husbands and wives of those in the front row. Behind us were the grandchildren. Today the front row is gone and my generation is now sitting in that front row of life’s journey. We are now the older generation, and I have become the patriarch of the current living Arnold generation. The time has come for us to be the older generation.

This last weekend was special. Thirteen of the Arnold lineage, plus husbands and wives, kids, and couple of girlfriends and grand kids gathered at my brother Terry’s home in Cottage Grove, Oregon. There were only two families missing. We had such a good time reminiscing the old days a in Indiana. Lots of good stories and laughs. The only sad note is that this is probably the last time this many members of our family will be together as a unit. Eventually this is what family comes to. The older generation moves to the front row, and is replaced by they next generation.

My two brothers and I are now sitting in the front row. It is a fact of living in today’s world. All of our genealogy lines moved from the East to the West, one step at a time. They all ended up in Indiana, where the next generations stayed for over a hundred years. My generation then spread out all over the country. We were a nomadic generation. In the group that was in Oregon, we were from, South Florida, New York City, San Antonio, Texas, San Diego, California, and finally Cottage Grove, Oregon. If you took a roll call, ten years ago, many would be living somewhere other than what is listed. And so goes the nomad life in our family. Something is lost, when family lives so far apart.

I am about to finally finish our family history book. In rereading things I researched and wrote about over fifteen years ago, I was reminded of our family roots. I uncovered so many stories because every life is a story. God Bless our family and yours.


Have a nice day.

Sam

The Importance of Stuff or Not

I hope you have noticed I haven't posted in a while. I have been hard at work on writing and editing our family history. It is a big project. This is a little jewell I found stuck amonst my papers.


Father Dick Rice works with a group of eight priests in community service.  It is his everyday work.  They would occasionally get the proverbial question, “What’s your Fax number”.  The group had decided that they were the only people in St. Paul without a FAX machine and they should get one.  They had pretty much made up their mind when one ask, “How many times would we use it?”  They decided that it would probably be necessary only about three times a week.  It now seemed silly to spend the money on a fax machine for that amount of usage.  They inquired who in the church area might have a fax machine.  They discovered that the church office six blocks down the street had one.  It was managed by a person that worked for the church they didn’t know.  They worked out a deal to use their fax machine.  For the three times a week they might need a fax machine they would use that one.  In the mean time they made a new friend in the other office.  Not accumulating more “stuff”, saved money and found a new friend.

That week he had listened to the poems of that new found 82 year old friend.  She ask him if he would listen to her poems because she had no one else to listen to them.  And he spent the time and listened to this little old lonely lady.

Time rushs by too fast. Slow down and listen every once in a while. Poems are not stuff.  The Bible is not stuff. We are not stuff.

Sam

A Man of Many "Wowies"

In Walter Isaakson’s biography of Steve Jobs he writes of what he wanted from a prospective employee.

“Job’s primary test for recruiting people in the spring of 1981 to be part of his merry band of pirates was making sure they had a passion for the product. He would sometimes bring candidates into a room where a prototype of the Mac was covered by a cloth, dramatically unveil it, and watch. If their eyes lit up, if they went right for the mouse and started and clicking, Steve would smile and hire them.  Recalled Andrea Cunninghm. “He wanted them to say Wow!”

I quote this passage to show that when a someone says “Wow”, the person is amazed and awed by what he sees. It was a term Steve job used in everyday life. It’s the WOW factor.

In a eulogy at Steve Jobs’s funeral, Mona Simpson, Job’s biological sister, talked about Steve’s last minutes on Earth.

“Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for long time at his children, then his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.

Steve’s final words were:

“OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW”.

Did, Steve Jobs, a true visionary and world changer once again show us the future we might expect in our life after life. Heaven must truly be a WOW, awesome and powerful.

Steve Jobs will help God change the world.

Sam

Note: Not sure where I stole this, but thanks

Crash!

I ran across this on Mark's Facebook Page. The boy did have some adventure in his life.

October 5, 2009 at 6:55pm

Ok, so day was a little bit crazy, I have tweeted a lot about today's events. Here's the whole story.

Around 12:15 or so I was sitting behind my computer, playing Farmville and listening to music. I here a plane fly over, louder then normal. It sounded close but we live a few miles from Flying Cloud Airport. About a minute later I thought I heard my mom call from downstairs, I wondered downstairs and she was around. I got that feeling that was not right. I slipped on my shoes and walked outside.

Across the street I could see smoke coming from across the street in between two houses and I heard screaming. I ran across the street, a neighbor was wandering around in a bathrobe. When I got around the side of the house there it was. A small plane on fire!

As I was running across the street a red pick-up came screaming down the street, one guy jumped out and ran not the muddy and steep slope towards the plane.

I will admit that my thought was "Shit, this thing is going to blow up."

I heard "We need a crowbar or a hammer to smash this window out! We need a crowbar!"

I ran back to my house and searched for something big and heavy to swing, of course there wasn't much there, I ran into the house and grabbed two hammers. I ran across the street as two Eden Prairie cops pulled in. I started down the slope towards the plane, without much of a plan. The cops screamed "Sir, get back here, we got it!" I was not one to argue with them or try to be a hero.

At this point they my neighbor Bob and the guy in the pick-up truck had busted the window open and was carrying him to safety. At that point more cops where there. I started to panic a bit because I didn't see my mom anywhere. "Where's my mom?" I asked the weird neighbors. "I haven't seen her"

I realized that her car was here, and I calmed down. I called her. "Where are you?"
"I'm almost home-"
"A plane just crashed across the street"
"Wha-"
"Just get here"

A fireman asked me to move my car further down the street and I did. Mom pulled in around the same time. Around this time, I posted my first tweet from my phone.

"Plane crashes in Eden Prairie. Film at 11. Across the street from me. No shit."

At this point things calmed down, firefighters were putting out the fire and cops and fire were everywhere.

Not more then 10 minutes later I got an @reply from @myfox9

MyFOX9 @Drtiehead can you call 952-946-5767 with any info?

Wow, really, the power of Twitter.

I saw the two guys from the pick-up truck and I talked to them. It turns out they were headed to Lifetime fitness, which is about a mile from my house. They saw the plane, which was a twin engine plan, flying low and they knew it was in trouble and they followed the smoke.

Too call these guys heroes is an understatement, both them and the Bob the neighbor both throw caution to the wind and risked it to save this guys life. Hats off.

I posted this picture, http://twitpic.com/kdzau about 30 minutes after the crash. You can see the two neighbors houses, the plane crashed right between those houses. Bob and his wife Joy lives in the house on the left. Joy was in there kitchen and saw the plane crash into the ground.

Of course my Mom wants me to comb my hair and put on some nicer clothes. I was wearing sweatpants and a zip-up. I decided to change, because the media was here.

I spend the rest of the day, tweeting and talking to the media, I spoke to Fox 9, Pioneer Press, MN Sun, Minnesota Public Radio and a few others.

This could have been a disaster. Had the plane hit any of any of the houses...you don't want to think about it. The fact is, other then a banged up pilot, no one was hurt, no houses were hit, I feel very lucky.

Once everything calmed down I got to admit, I had fun being "that guy" with the media. The first time I was flagged down by the media, I almost started laughing. I kept thinking of the scene from The Informant, "I'm a person of interest in an on going investigation."

Currently it's about 9 at night and there is a mobile command center parked across the street and the wreckage is going to be moved tomorrow morning.

Crazy day...