Barracuda Blues: Tuesday, May 6th!

Hi Ski! I am happy to pick you up on Friday sometime. We will be home late on Wednesday night so give us a call on Thursday and we'll make arrangements. Had a fab time at Mayan ruins at Coba yesterday, as well as swimming in a cenote. You can borrow the bike I used to reach temple! Out with Flamin' and Sarge, (All the paddlers send their regards to The Great Ronaldo!), and gang tonight for last dinner before heading back to Vancovuer. Cheers, Patriizzio!
 

Pics: Too much tequila for Sarge after visiting ruins! Dinner last night with Jocelyn and Joanne, neighbour in Vancouver; Saturday, after ceremony; Tour de Maya and a barracuda that attacked Cora Lee and came away the worse for wear!

Raphael Lee posted in Marvin's Stag In Mexico

Raphael Lee Because of a very early flight this morning I didn't get a chance to say farewell to everyone today and here's my lazy attempt at it. I wanted to say thank you for welcoming me into the group. I had truly the time of my life celebrating the union of one of my most respectable friends Marvin and the new 'market place' inductee Nicole.  Both the Mercados, the Sutherlands and all relatives were very warm and generous. Certainly, some amazing times were shared and please add me as a friend. I look forward to seeing all the pictures that will pop up here! I hope everyone leaves Mexico with the same fantastic memories as I do AND.. If you're flying American Airlines they're charging $25 per check-in bag so keep in mind when you arrive at the airport tomorrow ;) Enjoy the sunshine today! -Raph

See you at 7:00 on Friday. I'm pretty sure Pat & Corinne are still away but probably back soon. Cheers....Paul

Hello Everyone! Thanks for lovely dinner invitation, Lynn. We will be home late on Wednesday night but already have a social engagement on Friday so won't be able to join you. Cheers, Patrizzio! Sorry.  Another time. ..

Thanks, Lynn. What would you like me to bring? Cheers, Brenda salad? Lynn Greens it is. See you on Friday. B. Shall I bring a fruit flan for dessert?....Paul sure! Lynn

When you are back in town? Can you make dinner at Lynn C's on Friday the 9th? Kjell is back in Stockholm getting tested. Let's talk when you are back. Paul

Hi Lads!

Ski! is in town and up for a ride on Friday. Any interest in joining us? We will be home late on Wednesday night so give me a call on Thursday and we'll make arrangements.  Cheers, Patriizzio!

P, might wrk for me. Will you bring the Twila? W I'm keen, if the weather holds.
Ray 

Hi Elly and Tony! Trust all goes well!  We will be home late on Wednesday night so not sure if you will be up.  Cheers, Patriizzio!

Hello Patrick & Corinne, Thanks for the Easter greeting card - those Jacquie Leason (spelling??) cards are so nice. One of these days I should become a member as well..

All is fine with us though I seem to have come down with a cold in the last 24 hours - hopefully it won't hang around too long. Finally we are seeing signs of spring in this part of the country though I expect your spring is well underway. Leaves are just starting to sprout as our season is a good three weeks behind the usual for this time of year. It has been a long and colder winter for us but not as severe as other parts of Canada.

In Feb/Mar we spent 2 weeks in Punta Cana with our daughter & family along with Gerry's parents from Buenos Aires - a lovely time as we get to "spoil" our 2 year old granddaughter who we feel is just a delight.

Lately just been working outside, raking and getting the yard tidied up - always lots to do both inside and out so never bored. We are going to New Jersey to see Lynsey next week and will likely stay the better part of a week. She joined a new choir this past year and invited us to attend their spring concert over the long weekend. As well, another opportunity to spend some time with Emily who is now starting to talk more, a combination of Spanish and English.
 

 I'm going to Edmonton in July to see Mom as well as Charlie & Ken. Mom is thinking very seriously about selling her house and moving into some type of extended care - not sure where at this point. We are/will try to convince her that she needs to go into a small apartment type facility rather than a single room as she is still pretty independent. I can't see her being remotely satisfied to live in one room - not yet at any rate. Hard decision for her, no matter where she goes but she seems to need more and more help from my brothers and is so housebound in the winter that it really is time for her to move on.

We've a trip planned for China, leaving late August- looking forward to that. The trip includes all the touristy things in the major cities, a 4 or 5 day river cruise and we end in HongKong. Our BC friends who we did the Med. cruise with last year will be joining us for this trip as well. Expect you've traveled to China at some point in your world travels - is there any place you've not visited? Take care and stay in touch. Roma & Leonard

From Good Bounces & Bad Lies by Ben Wright. The author, who later became a commentator for CBS Sports, was ten years old in wartime Britain in 1942. The experience changed him:  

"You see, the war had turned my young friends and I into beastly little savages. Luton, the town in which I was born, is 30 miles north of London and was quickly in the thick of things in World War II. A Vauxhall factory (now a General Motors plant) had switched from making automobiles to becoming Britain's biggest producer of Churchill Tanks. The townspeople, therefore, experienced daylight raids of dive-bombing German Stukas early in the war. I learned as a young boy to recognize the frightening whine of a Stuka in full dive.
 

The Luftwaffe targets the Vauxhall factory

"My lads and I had opportunities to view the occasional handiwork of the Royal Air Force when we would pedal our bikes to the crash sites and raid the downed German planes. We would always be in a hurry to reach the downed bombers, because if we got there before anyone else, we could canvas the wreckage for wallets, valuables, and gauges from the instrument panels. We'd grimly scavenge for anything we might be able to sell on the black market. We never ran into any pilots who were still alive, but I won't kid you, we did run into pilots who were still warm. It was a morbid hobby for a ten-year-old child to have.
 

"We were very evil little children, shaped from the hardship of war. I recall vividly coming very quickly upon a downed Messerschmitt 110, which was a two-engined fighter-bomber. One of my friends and I were rooting around in the cabin, where we'd collected both pilots' wallets, when we noticed smoke billowing out of one of the engines. " 'We'd better get out of here!' I shouted.
"As we fled, the plane exploded and we were both blown into a nearby hedge. By the grace of God, we didn't suffer a scratch, but even we had more sense than to go back into downed aircraft after that awful experience. ...
 

"At that young, impressionable age, I was forced to learn to get used to this kind of violence and destruction. I survived the V-1 rockets and the V-2s, which were more lethal. The V-1s were little unmanned airplanes with a primitive, noisy jet engine on the tail. Flames came out of the engine, so they could always be spotted at night. I could hear their sound -- a 'chug-chug-chug' -- as they flew over. The sound would stop when their engines cut out, and they would take about 45 seconds to fall from the sky and explode on impact. My sister and I would stand on the steps of the air raid shelter and watch them fly over. When the motor cut there was a very distinct silence, so we would run down into the shelter, slam shut the heavy door and brace for the explosion. 

"The sight of London burning, its skies orange with the glow of fire, became sort of ordinary to me and the others who were going to survive this horror. I became emotionally dead, and became this little beast." Good Bounces & Bad Lies, Ben Wright , Sleeping Bear Press, 1999. 


From Comedy at the Edge by Richard Zoglin. The lives of superstar comedians George Carlin and Richard Pryor bear witness to the pain beneath so much of our humor: "[George Carlin's] father, an ad salesman, was a drinker prone to violent outbursts, and when George was only two, his mother grabbed him and his older brother, fled down the fire escape, and left for good.

Mary Carlin and her boys spent two years shuttling among friends and relatives, before finally getting an apartment of their own -- with George's father stalking them all the way. 'He hounded her,' says Carlin. 'And he frightened her. When we lived on One Hundred Fortieth Street, we would come back from downtown, get off the subway, and the procedure was, my mother would go to the call box, get the local precinct, and say, 'Hi, it's Mary and the kids. I'm at One Hundred and Forty-fifth Street. Come and get us.' And they would drive us home and see us into the house. Sometimes, he'd be across the street, just looking.' Even when they finally moved into an apartment that his father didn't know the whereabouts of, his mother was still on edge. If they got an unexpected knock, she'd tell George to peek under the door. If he saw a lady's shoes, he could open it. A man's shoes, and they would stay quiet until the visitor went away. This family drama ended only when his father died. George was eight...

"He was born Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor, on December 1, 1940, in Peoria, Illinois. His mother, who appears to have been a prostitute, and his father married when Richard was three and split up when he was ten. He then went to live with his grandmother, who ran a chain of whorehouses in town. In his autobiography, Pryor Convictions, Pryor describes learning about sex by peeking through keyholes to watch the prostitutes at work, and soaking up neighborhood lore at a bar called the Famous Door, where 'people came in to exchange news, blow steam or have their say.'

He was kicked out of Catholic school when they found out about the family business, and he moved into an integrated elementary school. There he got an early taste of racism, when he gave a scratch pad as a gift to a little white girl he had a crush on. The next day, as Pryor tells it, the girl's angry father came to school and berated him in front of the class: 'Nigger, don't you ever give my daughter anything.' " Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-up in the 1970s Changed America, Richard Zoglin, Bloomsbury USA, 2008