Some childhood memories

                    He leadeth me, O blessed thought!
                    O words with heav' nly comfort fraught!
                    What e'er I do, where 'er I be,
                    Still 'tis God's hand that leadeth me.

As we sang the old and familiar hymn "He leadeth me" at church this morning,  for a moment I was a child again, transported to McIntire Methodist Church and Paul Cassells was leading this song.  Paul was the kind of person who made you feel good when he was around.

Now mentioning Paul I am reminded of when I was five or six Grandma Lowe put me up to asking him, "Paul, are you going to marry Molly?"  He answered, "Roy, I aim to do that very thing." I told Peggy that at our family reunion in August.
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what's a parent to do about failing schools?

My five children are out of Caddo parish's failing schools, but I have grandkids attending schools in Bossier.  While Bossier parish school system gets a grade of C, not all schools are passing.  Schools my grandchildren are attending, Plantation Park and Rusheon, get a grade of D-minus.

I am not interested in finding blame but I charge the state and  parish school officials to find the problems and fix them.  We cannot go  on depriving our young people of a decent education,.

Just for the heck of it I checked the scores of schools my four sons and my daughter attended.  All attended Forest Hill, rate C-, and Ridgewood, which drew a D-.  Four attended Southwood, now D-, and the other attended Caddo Magnet, rated A-. Unless the school is a total failure, the dedicated student with helpful parents can overcome and acquire a passable education, but he or she will suffer in comparison to the student attending the better school. 

In my estimation the most important grades are kindergarten and first grade.  That it where the child learns to read and learns to enjoy reading.  Some teachers are not interested and some parents are unable to help their  child or refuse to take the time.

USS Pickens completes her service

After leaving Panama we crossed the gulf and proceeded up the east coast to Norfolk. There, we were in the Hampton Roads area, the world's largest naval base.  Most of the people still on board were, like me, young, single, and awaiting that notice of the place and time of our discharge.

We had few watches to stand but we had duties as we prepared the ship for decommissioning.  Our work during the day was highly unpleasant, chipping off rust and removing asbestos deep in the bowels of the ship. The masks we were issued helped very little to keep the dust out of noses and mouths, and we were covered in dust at the end of the day.

Decommissioning was completed April 12, and the Pickens was re-delivered to the United States Maritime Commission April 18.  On May 1 her name was struck from the Navy list.  In 1970 she was  with the National Defense Reserve Fleet, laid up at the  James River berthing area. Her fate after that, I do not know.

Just some unpleasnt facts about this nations spending

Did you know that in the time Obama has been president, your household's share of the national debt has increased by $35,835?  And President Obama wants to spend billions more in his so-called jobs program that is nothing more than a political ploy.  He knows the Democrats cannot accept his plan but after it fails passage he wants to say he offered a program that would create millions of jobs but the Republicans refused to pass it and are responsible for the high joblessness.

Millions are  either inefficiently or fraudulently spent with companies supposedly developing alternate energy sources.  The Obama administration, not fazed by losing 535 million dollars to Solyndra, was prepared to invest or lend another 469 million.

Obama is now campaigning on a bus tour being financed by taxpayers.   Michelle is back from a vacation trip that set taxpayers back round a half billion dollars.  Meanwhile, more than one million persons lost their jobs in September while the president could have saved many of these jobs by eliminating some job-killing regulations of the EPA.

Education gets bad grade as expected

Yes, the grade of D earned by school systems in Northwest Louisiana was  no surprise; we've gotten accustomed to our schools failing miserably, but we keep hoping for improvement.  As usual, Bossier fared the best, getting a grade of C.  Schools are given numerical scores from 9 to 200, with in our area the lowest being 66 for Caddo and the highest Bossier's 102.  The state of Louisiana as a whole got a grade of C.

I am not attempting to fix blame, but this bad performance year after year is disheartening.  Some have offered their solution  --  quit testing and give everyone a passing grade.  The problem is we have to compete in the world, and students in most industrialized countries do much better than we do.

Pickens leaves Colon and begins her final voyage

Did the USS Pickens have a feeling that this would be her last voyage as she steamed away from Colon toward New Port News and Norfolk that morning in March, 1945?  We members of the crew, who had done service only  in the South Pacific, were excited about entering the  Atlantic and visiting the east coast.  But we were most excited that this would be our last voyage before gaining enough points for discharge and re-entering civilian life.  The war officially ended September 2, 1945, so we had put in our "duration and six months."

As we steamed across the Gulf of Mexico and past Louisiana, I remember thinking that this was the nearest to home I had been since I enlisted in the navy.  I had not received  any leave time, not after boot camp or radar school or when we were in San Francisco.  As we sailed around Florida the voice of Eddy Arnold came over our radio, singing one of his country songs.  On we went, expecting nothing but good and happy things to come.

Do cows appreciate Shakespeare?

Did they enjoy it when I quoted MacBeth --"Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand, Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still..."  Or would they have preferred a recital of Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard," or perhaps "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," or even Poe's "Annabel Lee?"  You've heard of contented cows and playing music to  them while they are being milked; yet it never occurred to me that when I  repeated "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in its petty pace from day to day" that I might be influencing milk production.

No matter your age you remember having to memorize and then recite in class poems and soliloquies from plays, especially those written by Shakespeare.  If you are like me you still remember a few lines but that's it, a few lines, as from Hamlet about all I can recall is "Poor Yorick, I knew him well."  I can do a little better with MacBeth but despite having studied Henry V in the last 15 years, I can recite none of it.

It would be called multitasking now but it was just expected when I was in school.  I would have selections to learn and chores to do so I did them at the same time, mouthing Shakespeare out loud while milking the cows. I never gave a thought to what the cows thought about it.  Perhaps, it would be worth a federal grant to study whether reading poetry to cows increases their milk production.  Surely, the funds could come from those billions going to build solar panels and other alternative energy projects..