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musings of mark since 2001

Only on the internet would you find someone devoted solely to one line in an obscure movie by an even more obscure actor and then catalouge it all in this one giant table: Stinking Badges Home Page

   For humiliated Palestinians, a long march home. From the Rueters AlertNet, great place to get NGO news with a point of view from everyone’s perspective.

   Got a couple more web sites to build, a larger one for the Bowen Island Arts Council and a little brochure type for Foxglove Fibre Arts, a local co-op. I’ve taken all the bookmarks that I’ve saved for sites on Bowen and put them on a page linked to the words above under Blogged – “on Bowen Island”. Will add a little submit box for any new ones that turn up here in the next couple days. The BC Links are now in the bottom right hand column.

      Banks are getting harder to deal with for poor folk as they keep pushing up the profits year after year to keep the stockholders happy. As if they didn’t make enough profit already they keep trying to squeeze every dime out to the detriment of anyone that actually has to do business with them. I had two checks to cash today, so off to the bank that the account for the checks is held in. I’ve cashed checks from the same person at the same bank more than a dozen times already, but this time they say the rules have changed. No longer is it enough that I have multiple pieces of ID and there is money in the account, all checks that are presented for cash must now be cleared individually. In other words, if you don’t deposit the check in your own account and wait for it to clear they must phone the account holder for clearance. Took twenty minutes all together, no wonder banks are raking in megabuck profits by insisting on electronic transactions.

   A surprise email yesterday from Jennifer; my step-daughter from almost twenty years ago found my web site, actually her brother Brian found it I think and contacted me. After her Mom died, the biological father and his mother took them back east right after the wake and did their best to cut the ties between myself and the kids.
   She’s 30 now with three kids and after a bit of a rocky start with a not so nice guy, Jennifer is happily raising a family with a good man and trying not to work too much. A real lot like her Mom, but without the epilepsy to muck things up. Brian did the college thing, was working for a stock broker in Chicago but as he is in the Reserves he’s been called back to active duty. He’s been able to travel all over the world with the Service, but nervous times for him right now.
   Jennifer remembered the Boyce Thompson Arboretum where I had spread Mary’s ashes by Ayer Lake, and had even visited in 1992. Living in Florida she doesn’t get back to Arizona much of course, but it was nice to be able to give her the exact location of her Mom. I think her Dad and Grandmother may have tried to convince the kids that she didn’t want to be cremated and put in a nice place, but Mary’s old friend Loretta was able to help I believe.
   It sure is nice to hear that they are okay, they were not my biological children but when they went back east it was really a difficult time for me, as if I had lost my own. What’s that politically correct term now, closure. But every time a door closes a new one opens eh?