Hi BOB,

Hope all of you and yours are well.  I’m concerned about Ike hitting the Texas coast and watching that closely.  My daughter spent 12 hours in Houston traffic trying to evacuate during Rita and I hope that sort of thing doesn’t happen again.  Mostly I hope everyone stays safe and dry.

Lynn and I just returned from Yellowstone.  I now understand why it is the most popular US national park.  We went on a 4.5 mile hike which went along the crest of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River, through a field of geothermally active boiling mudpots, by a lake where a wolf was cooling off after a fresh kill and then though a grassy plain - just unbelievably beautiful.   Crowds were gone since it was after Labor Day, so it was as if we had the place to ourselves.  We were only there four days, but you could spend a lifetime there.

 I’m doing a little research for two upcoming family reunions (father and mother’s side) in WV and MD at the end of this month.  My work was made a lot easier when I found a distant cousin whose great grandfather was my great grandfather’s brother.  She had already written a book about my mother’s side of the family and much of the part of it that I was interested in was posted on the internet.  It was a real joy to correspond with her. 

Reed, that was a fantastic story about Desert Storm.  Thanks for sharing that.  Chuck, thanks for all the time and energy you put into this effort to connect crewdogs.  I think it is worth the effort. 

Best Regards

James

PS  Chuck, is there an easy way to upload pictures?  I went into the help menu and my eyes glassed over about halfway through the preliminary section:)  Using the upload box on the Manage view, the image took over the entire screen.  I know I’m missing something.