Artwork inherited from my parents

My two favorite Carroll County paintings.

Jeanie Taylor's painting of the fountain on the southwest corner of the Carroll County Courthouse square. I lived next door to Jeanie on East Franklin Street when we were little kids. This is a print on canvas.

"Sycamore Row," an original painting by Mary Swisher of the sycamores that grew from a stretch of corduroy road on the old Michigan Road south of Deer Creek.

My fortunate son

That's my son Steve on Sousaphone (often improperly referred to as a tuba) backing up John Fogerty (Creedence Clearwater Revival) at the Wynn in Las Vegas.

I played Sousaphone in the Delphi High School marching band. I never could have imagined that I would have a son playing the same instrument with a headliner in Vegas.

Ruh-roh!

I wore my Michael Kors smartwatch to the fitness center this morning to see how accurately it measures steps.

It didn't do very well.

The treadmill said I covered 1.13 miles and burned 100 calories.

But the smartwatch, which had been counting my steps since I got up a few hours earlier, said I only covered .4 miles and burned just 31.4 calories so far today.

That's a pretty significant discrepancy.

A smartwatch for grownups

I'm evaluating the new $295 Michael Kors Access Hybrid Brown Gage Smartwatch for the Amazon Vine Program this week and I think I like it.

When I think of smartwatches, the first thing that comes to mind is the Apple Watch, which is actually a wearable little computer. This is NOT an Apple Watch. It looks like an ordinary analog watch with an easy-to-read silver-on-black face and a couple of function buttons.

There is no way to change the face and have all of the tricky features that come with the Apple Watch, but therein lies the feature that makes me prefer the MK watch - those features come at a heavy energy price. The Apple Watch has to be recharged every 18 hours or less, depending on how much you do with it. The MK watch has a battery (CR2430) that is expected to last about 40 days - maybe more, depending on usage.

After nearly 20 years with a self-winding Breitling, the idea of charging my watch every night tells me the Apple Watch is a toy that is not to be taken seriously as a daily wear timepiece. The MK watch makes a lot more sense to me in terms of energy requirements.

The MK watch uses a proprietary MK Access app that you download free from wherever your smartphone gets its apps. It walks you through the initial setup process, which synchs your phone and watch via Bluetooth.

The MK watch is also an activity tracker of modest abilities - it calculates how many steps you take each day and estimates what that means in terms of calories burned.

It also monitors your sleep pattern. In both cases, you get to set your step and sleep goals and you can tell at any time where you are in your pursuit of the goals.

The top button swivels the hands around to indicate the day of the week (hour hand) and day of the month (minute hand).

You can program the bottom button to ring your phone, control the music on your smartphone, trip the shutter on your phone's camera or track your goal progress.

It can buzz when someone you deem important calls you (a handy feature if you're in a place where you have to mute the ringtone on your phone).

The MK watch may be short on entertainment, but it has lots of features that are actually useful. In short, it's a smartwatch for grownups.

Liberating

There's something supremely liberating about having a trailer hitch on your car.

Adios, wicker loveseat

Soon after we moved to Arkansas, one of Maria's reporters gave us a white wicker chair and loveseat for our front porch.

The squirrels decided they might be food and spent the last several years gnawing on them to the point where they are no longer an asset. I put the chair out for the trash last Tuesday and the loveseat went this morning.

Busy

Today has been fairly productive so far.

I pulled all of our tax information together, filled out some forms our tax preparer sent us, and dropped it all off at his office.

I also picked up the foyer rug at the run cleaners, had lunch with Maria, and bought some wood screws and Gorilla Glue at Lowe's to repair a dining room chair.

Now I'm off to make the repairs.

Watching for a new watch

The Amazon Vine program has offered me one of these $295 Michael Kors Access Hybrid Brown Gage Smartwatches to review.

Naturally, I said yes.

Unlike the Apple Watch, this smartwatch doesn't have a changeable face, but it does interface with an iPhone or Android device to work with a dedicated app to track activities and sleep. I'll post a copy of my review here after I have a chance to evaluate it.

I kinda hate to put my titanium Breitling Chrono Avenger aside for a watch that costs only 1/10th as much, but we all must make sacrifices now and then.

Logging

James Reddig, who works at First United Methodist Church with Maria, is always on the lookout for free firewood, so we offered him the two trees that have fallen out of the woods onto our property in the past few months.

He showed up today with his 4WD truck and logging trailer and spent about five hours cutting up the logs into manageable lengths and loading them onto his truck.

Before he arrived, I dug out the diagram showing the location of our septic field so as to avoid damaging it with the weight of truck and trailer.

There is stil a lot of deadwood to be cut up and burned, but James gave us a headstart on cleaning up the property.

Offered without comment

Yes, I'm from THAT Delphi

I was raised in Delphi, Ind., where I enjoyed a safe, idyllic childhood.

There was only minor crime and I can't recall a single murder in the 18 years I lived there with my parents before going off to college.

And whenever someone asks me where I'm from, I'm used to getting blank stares when I tell them. I usually end up saying it's in north central Indiana about 18 miles east of Lafayette-West Lafayette - you know, where Purdue University is.

That ended abruptly last week when two young girls were murdered just outside Delphi on a walking trail near Deer Creek. It immediately became national news and now, in the mind of most Americans who have been paying attention, Delphi is forever linked with this senseless double homicide and the search for the killer.

And that will attach to all of us who grew up in the Carroll County seat, wherever we go and whenever we are introduced as being from Delphi.

It's a helluva reason for a town to be famous.

Hauling

Having a trailer hitch on the Lexus is surprisingly empowering.

Morgan bought the desk on the left of the frame for $50 a few years ago when she first lived with us and she and Maria set about stripping it for refinishing. The project bogged down somehow and the desk has sat in the garage, taking up space, ever since.

Until yesterday.

I rented a 5x8-foot open trailer from U-Haul for $18.95 and Maria and I drove the desk and a baker's cabinet to Morgan's house where we left them in her garage. Then we returned the trailer to U-Haul, had dinner and drove home.

BMW steins

I got an email the other day from someone who works for BMW Motorrad in Germany expressing surprise and curiosity after they stumbled across this image of my two WWII BMW motorcycle steins online.

I explained that they are not uncommon and turn up occasionally in stein auctions like The Stein Auction Co. (tsaco.com). And there is also a 1 liter version (see photo below).

Phew!

We lucked out on the error notifications, etc. on the Lexus.

I turned the guys at Gateway Tire loose on it and they solved the problem(s) for only $70.53.

I feared we were going to have to spend $2,300 for a new catalytic converter, but it appears the error codes and the three non-functional power windows were the result of the kids at Sam's Club not knowing what they were doing when they installed a new battery last Friday afternoon.

Hayden and us

We had breakfast yesterday with Austin and his daughter (Maria's granddaughter) Hayden in Lebanon, Ind.

It's always something

We put a fast 950 miles on the Lexus over the weekend after getting it fitted with a trailer hitch and a new battery.

As we set off for the weekend, I noticed that the driver's power window was the only one functioning and made a mental note to check with the U-Haul trailer hitch installers. In retrospect, I think the marginally trained kids at Sam's Club who put in the new battery may be the culprits.

Driving home from the U-Haul store this morning, I was startled to see the Check Engine light come on, along with the VSC and TRAC OFF warning lights.

A little online research leads me to believe (worst case scenario) I may need a new catalytic converter, or maybe sensors, or a tighter gas cap. One can make a case for the catalytic converter since I occasionally smell sulfur dioxide when accelerating rapidly.

I have an appointment with the guys at Gateway Tire tomorrow morning and hope they can solve the seemingly unrelated problems of power windows and warning lights as cheaply as possible.

The village has more than its share of idiots

I joined a news group on Facebook today to keep current on a crime in my home county.

Now I wish I hadn't.

I realize that, having been a professional writer (newspaper journalist and freelance writer) all of my adult life, I risk being called an intellectual snob or an elitist, but I can't help but be horrified at the barely intelligible gibberish many people are posting there.

Like run-on sentences that go on forever without capitalization or punctuation, egregious misspellings (even through Facebook flags misspelled words), and garbled sentences that leave you guessing at what the writer had in mind.

I am a product of public school education in that county, so I see no excuse for people not knowing basic grammar and syntax.

I am embarrassed to say I came from the same place as these people who lack the writing skills of a competent third-grader.

Lights

The electricians retuned to our commercial building this morning to make the final lighting improvement.

Now all we need is a new tenant.

Chairs

The folks at the Justice Network left a few things behind when they cleared out of our downtown commercial building, including these three chairs from the waiting room.

I advertised them for sale on a local Facebook yard sale site over the weekend, but nobody wanted them for a paltry $20, so I gave them to our remaining tenant, the Pregnancy Resource Center. They seemed happy to get them.

Bad winter for the PCH

My favorite road is having a hard winter.

This map was posted on the Big Sur Information page on Facebook with the statement:

"Highway 1 from Carmel to the Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge is in good shape so you still have access to all the restaurants, hotels, art galleries and businesses in the Big Sur valley.

"Nacimiento-Ferguson Road closure listed on this map goes into effect at 5:00 PM, Wednesday, February 15."

The winter storms are always a threat to the Pacific Coast Highway in Big Sur, but this year is worse than most.

I killed my Brother

I accidentally murdered my Brother all-in-one printer last night.

We are moving stuff around in the office and I plugged it in at its new location without shutting it down properly before I unplugged it at the original site. I noticed a small spark when I plugged it into the power strip, followed by a spontaneous power up and power down. After that, it was dead as a doornail.

I called the Brother customer service line this morning and we determined that:
1. It needs professional service and
2. It's out of warranty.

Since I got it free a few years ago from the Amazon Vine Program, I'm not out any money and happily I have a nice Canon all-in-one printer that I got from the Vine Program that has now taken its place as our prime printer.

I hate to throw it into the trash, but I'd useless to me and takes up space.

I found my old Palm Treo 700p PDA/cell phone in the garage yesterday, along with its charger and a wireless keyboard.

It was a big deal when I bought it in October, 2006, but it is positively primitive compared with today's smartphones.

I hooked up the USB charger and the battery still shows 100% more than 24 hours later. That made me confident enough to offer the whole bundle for sale on Ebay where the phones alone are going for about $15.

Terry's Cafe

We went to Paragould for breakfast this morning, but found our first two places closed - one didn't serve breakfast and the other looked like it was out of business. So I suggested asking Siri for a good breakfast spot and she came up with Terry's Cafe in downtown Paragould. She obligingly guided us there.

The place is wildly popular with the locals and serves a good breakfast with a charming down-home ambiance.

Pay no attention to the wraiths passing through the photo - when you shoot an iPhone panorama, things that move turn out weirdly.

The fabulous Flora Building

After installing 16 new fluorescent light fixtures, having the carpet professionally cleaned, having a cleaning crew wipe down the woodwork and clean all of the glass and restrooms, and having a painting crew touch up the scrapes and glitches and screw and nail holes in the walls, the vacant side of our commercial building is ready for inspection by prospective clients. To that end, I went to Sam's Club this morning and bought a bale of toilet paper to make sure that the four restrooms are well stocked in case prospective tenants need to use the facilities.

As I mentioned earlier, the former tenants were forced out of business by a vindictive newspaper campaign and a couple of judges who were intent on fixing something was wasn't broken.

The former tenant has until the end of June on his lease and has promised to keep paying rent and utilities until then or, ideally, until we get a new tenant to take over the space.

Locker room memory aid

I had finished my 1+ miles on the treadmill at the fitness center yesterday afternoon and was in the locker room getting ready to shower when I noticed a guy who had obviously forgotten which locker he used to stash his clothes. The lockers have electronic keypad locks that let you enter your own four-digit combination. Once you unlock the locker, the lock waits for the next user to enter a combination.

As I walked off to the showers, I made a mental note to help him search if he hadn't found his locker by the time I finished showering.

Happily, he found it on his own. So I shared my secret for never losing track of my locker number.

I snap a photo of the number with my iPhone. I keep my phone with me when I work out because it pairs with my Bluetooth headphones to provide one of two exercise playlists I've created.

I'm proud to say my memory is good enough that I've never had to resort to the iPhone photo backup, but I'm not embarrassed to say that day may come. And I'll be ready.

Michael Lindberg

I found this 8x10 in a box in the garage this afternoon. It was creased and torn and I restored it as best I could.

Michael Lindberg struck me as an interesting, but enigmatic guy. This photo reminded me that he was a Vietnam vet and set me to wondering if PTSD factored into his suicide.

Rest in peace, Michael.

Dog gate

News relic

The Indianapolis News gave subscribers these little pocket Rand McNally road atlases back in the 1990s. Here's one that turned up yesterday.

50 years ago today

Today - Feb. 6, 2017 - is the 50th anniversary of my first day at The Indianapolis News.

I came to The News after five months at The Tipton Daily Tribune in Tipton, Ind. The News, also known as The Great Hoosier Daily, was Indiana's largest evening newspaper with seven editions daily, Monday through Saturday. My starting pay was $110 a week.

Over the next 33 years, I was a city desk rewrite man, city desk reporter, makeup editor, state and suburban desk reporter, suburban bureau chief... I shot my own photos to illustrate my stories most of the time and came to believe that a reporter who wasn't a shooter, wasn't a complete newspaperman (or woman). Happily, Maria wrote and shot photos too. I did about everything except over sports in my years at The News.

I started my newspaper career in the latter days of the hot type era when we wrote our stories on typewriters and printers set them in type on Linotype and Intertype machines. (In those days, a printer was a human being who worked with type, not a printing device attached to a computer.) Consequently, I know most of the arcane minutiae about printing with lead type, including the old "type lice" trick printers loved to play on rookies.

My career saw the advent of computers in the newsroom and the gradual phasing out of a whole generation of printers and typesetters and the transition of photography from film to digital.

I began to lose my enthusiasm for the job when The News staff got merged with The Star folks in 1995 and when The News ceased publication in 1999. I hated working at The Star and by October, 2000, Gannett had sucked the last bit of fun out of it.

So I fired The Star for wasting my time and took early retirement at age 55.

Since then, I've been a volunteer at Maria's newspapers in Crawfordsville, Ind. and Jonesboro, Ark. and can honestly say I've spent my entire adult life watching bean counters and other idiots ruin perfectly good newspapers.

Paper

I found these two certificates recently and decided to immortalize them on the blog.

Maria and I attended a one-day session of the Nikon School on June 8, 2002 at Cincinnati. That was back in the days when just about everyone was still shooting film and the handbook we got with the course dealt exclusively with film shooting.

The other certificate is in recognition of me serving as principal for a day at College Wood Elementary School in Carmel, Ind. on April 15, 1999. I was education writer for the Metro North Bureau of The Indianapolis News and Star at the time and was invited to be principal for a day by College Wood Principal Jane Boultinghouse. Jane's brother Wayne was my roommate for a semester at Indiana State University back in the 1960s.

Same message

Two wildly different Bill Murray movies were released in 1984 - Meatballs and The Razor's Edge. Interestingly, they had the same message - "It just doesn't matter."

Indy Club breakfast

We had a delightful breakfast yesterday with our Indianapolis BMW Club friends yesterday before racing home and concluding a whirlwind 26-hour Brookland-to-Indiana-to-Brookland trip. I'll explain the purpose at a later date.

Hopeful

Our old dishwasher, which sat in the garage since we replaced it, is at the curb awaiting collection by our trash service. It remains to be seen whether they will take it, but we are hopeful.

Bad news from Paradise

Today's Carmel (Calif.) weekly newspaper has bad news about my favorite road - Calif. 1 through Big Sur.

The photo above shows a rock slide just south of Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park that blocked access to 30 miles of the Pacific Coast Highway.

Also, a Chinese couple on a bus tour with their son, died last week in high surf along 17-Mile Drive. The bus had stopped to let passengers get out and photograph the surf, authorities said, and the wife was swept away by a high wave that rolled over Bird Rock. Her husband dove in to save her and was also drowned.

The Flora Building

We're making progress in getting the vacant side of our downtown commercial building ready to market to prospective tenants.

The 3,500 square-foot space was vacated earlier this month. At our Realtor's suggestion, we upgraded the lighting in the reception area and conference room. A cleaning crew wiped down the woodwork, vacuumed the carpet, scraped the Scotch tape off of the sliding glass windows and gave the place a good going-over on Monday.

I got bids from two carpet cleaning firms and scheduled one of them to get busy on the badly stained carpet on Saturday morning.

In the meantime, Maria and I need to touch up dings and scrapes in the paint.

It happens

The only kid I ever knew who got his eye shot out with a BB gun died Sunday.

He was 70 years old and was from Delphi, Ind.

VIDEO: WRETCHED LIBERAL HAG Removed From Plane After Harassing Trump Sup...

She went off on a guy who was flying to D.C. for the inauguration and ended up getting thrown off of the plane.

The other passengers applauded when airport police walked her off.

Obama Legacy Disposal Team

At last!

The last time I felt this inspired by a new president was 56 years ago when John Kennedy took the oath of office. That was when it was still respectable to be a Democrat.

And here's another of my favorite images from today.

New lights!

We had eight sets of fluorescent lights installed in the waiting room and conference room of our recently-vacated office space today.

Those areas were grossly under-illuminated by ceiling mounted can lights and the new fixtures transformed the spaces.

Now it's time to arrange for cleanup, including a good carpet cleaning and paint touch-up before we can seriously start marketing the 3,500 square feet of office space.

One more way to transmit disease

When I checked in at Clopton Clinic for a routine checkup with my doctor this morning, the receptionist handed me this pager.

WTF?

It struck me as a silly waste of money and one more way to transmit germs. Who knows what kind of diseased hapless fuck held it before they gave it to me? I think a lot about the HIPAA privacy law is stupid anyway, and this is a really lame way to avoid having the nurse call your same out in the waiting room.

My doc thinks it's stupid, too, and wonders why they can't just give me a number like they do at the license bureau (state revenue office is what they call it in Arkansas). That would assure anonymity and avoid transmitting diseases.

Bad new about a Newsie

Just learned that a former Indianapolis News colleague is in intensive care with congestive heart disease and pneumonia, having to be restrained from pulling out his IV and thinking he is being held captive in a cell at his wife's request and facing possible amputation of a foot.

Our commercial property

The Justice Network, a Memphis-based firm that works with courts to arrange public service jobs for defendants, has been forced out of business here by a combination of malicious pseudo-journalism and short-sighted judges.

The owner of the Justice Network, met me and our Realtor at our downtown commercial property this week to turn over the keys to their suite of offices and to remove their server. We are sad to see him go, but are gratified by his pledge to honor the terms of the lease and continue rent and utilities payments through the end of June. It takes a real stand-up guy to do something like that and he has my eternal gratitude and admiration.

I wouldn't hesitate to trust him with my wallet. Not so much with the newspaper editor who helped chase him out of town on the malicious premises that the Justice Network was somehow taking unfair advantage of the people it served. The two new judges campaigned on this absurd idea and on the promise that the courts could somehow take over the work being done by the Justice Network at a reduced cost to the taxpayers.

The courts looked at this option a few years ago and decided it would be more expensive, but these guys seem to think they are smarter than that. We shall see.

The upshot is that they have fewer sentencing options.

Our Realtor is hard at work looking for a new tenant. The sooner we can install a new tenant, the sooner we can release the previous renter from his financial obligation to us. The building was designed and built as medical practice with about a dozen examination rooms and generous office and storage space.

Happy Birthday, K1200GT

My 2003 K1200GT was born 14 years ago today in the Bayersche Motoren Werke Spandau Plant in Berlin.

It has carried me more than 78,000 miles so far and I look forward to many, many more.

Hoosier stuff

Even if you're a Hoosier, there are almost certainly a few things here you didn't know:


Tomato juice was first served at a French Lick, Indiana, hotel in 1925.

The first tomato juice factory was also in French Lick.

The world's largest orchid species collection is found at Ball State University in Muncie.

The first regulated speed limit (20 - 25 mph!) was initiated on Indiana roads in 1921.

The steepest railroad grade in the world is in Madison.

An average of 400 funnel clouds are sighted each year in Indiana .

The city of Gary was built on fill brought from the bottom of Lake Michigan through suction pipes.

There are only two Adams fireplaces in the United States. One is in the White House and the other in the Diner Home in Indiana

Josie Orr, wife of former Indiana Gov. Robert Orr, flew bombers and cargo planes during World War II.

The Indianapolis Methodist Hospital is the largest Hospital in the Midwest.

One of the first complete bathrooms in Indianapolis was in the home of Hoosier poet, James Whitcomb Riley.

The career of Dorothy Lamour (famous for the Bing Crosby-Bob Hope
Road Movies) was launched in Indianapolis.

Aviatrix Amelia Earhart was once a Professor at Purdue University.

Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis is the largest cemetery in the U.S.

The Allen County Library in Fort Wayne houses one of the largest genealogy libraries in America.

Wabash was the first electrified city in the U.S.

Pendleton was the site of the first hanging of a white man for killing Indians.

The Courthouse roof in Greensburg has a tree growing from it.

The world's first transistor radio was made in Indianapolis.

Clark Gable and wife Carole Lombard (born in Fort Wayne) honeymooned at Lake Barbee near Warsaw , Indiana .

The American Beauty Rose was developed at Richmond.

Elkhart is the band instrument capitol of the World.

Frank Sinatra first sang with the Tommy Dorsey band at the Lyric Theater in Indianapolis .

Purdue Alumnus Earl Butz served as the Secretary of Agriculture.

U.S. 231 is the longest highway in Indiana (231 miles).

Johnny Appleseed is buried at Fort Wayne.

The singing McGuire Sisters spent their childhood summers at the Church of God Campground in Anderson.

The main station of the Underground Railroad was in Fountain County.

There are 154 acres of sculpture gardens and trails at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Nancy Hanks Lincoln is buried in Posey County.

Crawfordsville is the only site in the world where crinoids are found. A crinoid is a form of deep-water marine life that looks something like a starfish.

Pendleton was the site of the 'Fall Creek Massacre.' A museum housing 3,500 artifacts of pioneer heritage now exists on that
site.

St. Meinrad Archabbey in Spencer County is one of only 2 archabbeys in the U.S. and seven in the world. (Abbey Press is an
operation of the archabbey.)

A German V-1 buzz bomb, believed to be the only one on public display in the nation, can be found on the Putnam County Courthouse
lawn in Greencastle.

Roberta Turpin Willett was born in Indiana.

James Dean was born and is buried in Indiana.

The world's tallest woman, Sandy Allen, lived in Indiana .

Red Skelton was born in Vincennes.

Mae West and Claude Akins were from Bedford.

The inventor of the television, Philo T. Farnsworth, lived in Fort Wayne.

Merry Christmas to me

Maria and I are doing our best to save money these days, even to the point of not exchanging Christmas gifts.

We saw to it that our children and grandchildren were taken care of, but austerity prevailed at this Flora house.

But God must have thought one of my wishes should be granted, so he caused Amazon.com to offer me a set of the new Bang & Olufsen H9 wireless headphones on Christmas Day.

Bang & Olufsen announced the latest headphones on Dec. 1 and they went on sale on the 8th for $499.

The Amazon Vine program has given me several B&O audio products in the past couple of years, starting with the H8 wireless headphones in February, 2015. They also offered me the H6 wired headphones and the lightweight Form 2i headphones last August, and an example of the Beoplay S3 wireless speaker.

Also, in March, 2015, they sent me a pair of Parrot ZIK 2.0 headphones to review.

So when I discovered the impending release of the H9 headphones in the early hours of Dec. 1, while sleeplessly surfing the web on my iPhone, I dared to hope the folks at the Vine Program would offer a set to me. And they did. On Christmas morning.

The UPS tracking site says they're on a truck for delivery today.

Schneesturm!

It snowed about an inch before dawn and caused a flurry of school closings. Those led to other closings that resulted in Maria and Morgan having the day off.

After 9 years in the south, I still find it amusing how ill-prepared these folks are for a little snow - an amount that would go practically unnoticed in Indiana.

Whatever. Jack and Dora don't seem to mind it.

Semper Fi

Eleven years ago today, we splashed a story about Crawfordsville native Phil Ward and his participation in the first flag-raising on Iwo Jima.

I had the amazing honor a couple of days earlier to speak with Raymond Jacobs, a member of the Marine recon patrol that raised the first flag on Iwo Jima.

Everyone has seen Associated Press photographer's iconic photo of the second flag-raising on Iwo. It's possibly the greatest photograph to come out of World War II and was the basis for the sculpture that is the U.S. Marine Corps Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The first flag-raising involved a smaller flag. Moments after the Marines erected the makeshift flagpole that was actually a water pipe the Japanese defenders had used to supply their fighting positions on the summit of Mt. Suribachi, the Japanese came out of their holes in the volcanic crater and attacked the Marines. They beat the attack back, but Staff Sgt. Lou Lowrey, who photographed the first flag-raising, tumbled down the slope and smashed his camera. Fortunately, the film was saved and we have this photo of the guys, including radioman Jacobs on the far right of this picture.

Jacobs is one of two surviving men from this photo. The other is Charles Lindberg.

Jacobs has an account of the action on another website and I was struck by this passage from it:

Just moments after the flag was raised we heard a roar from down below on the island.
Marines on the ground, still engaged in combat, raised a spontaneous yell when they saw the flag. Screaming and cheering so loud and prolonged that we could hear it quite clearly on top of Suribachi.

The boats on the beach and the ships at sea joined in blowing horns and whistles.

The celebration went on for many minutes. It was a highly emotional, strongly patriotic moment for all of us.

Jacobs was sorry to hear that Ward died a week or so before I called him and he corroborated Ward's account of the incident. I also spoke with other Marine veterans who insisted that the official U.S. Marine version of who was there was flat-out wrong.

The story went viral and was instrumental in the Marines revisiting the history of that day and confirming that Ward was, indeed, one of the first flag-raisers on Iwo.

It was the most gratifying story I ever wrote.

Page designer Karen Taylor outdid herself with the front page layout. Maria got a call from a reader later that day who said she had never seen a Journal Review front page like that.

"There's never been a Journal Review front page like that," Maria replied.

The laundry claims a victim

The garage door kept opening inexplicably yesterday and had me wondering if our new neighbors were making it happen. It didn't seem logical, since they almost certainly kept the garage door codes that came with the house when they bought it a couple of months ago.

Then, this morning I was taking clothes out of the dryer and found that I had sent my key fob remote garage door opener through the laundry. It is, of course, dead as a doornail.

I have a new one on order from Amazon.com for about $35. I noticed in the product description that the battery can be expected to last about five years, so mine was long overdue to fail.

I bought it to carry on motorcycles so I could easily operate the garage door, coming and going. It also comes in handy when I'm mowing the lawn and don't want to leave the garage door open because of the occasional snake or other varmint.