Random Thoughts

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Subject: RE: Random Thoughts
Date: Sun, 25 Oct 2009 09:11:34 -0700

One final thought on "The final resting place" here on earth and then I will give this a "rest".
I thought Terry gave the best summary of reasons to be buried in a certain place. I have lived most of my life in Arizona. Memorial Day in Arizona is almost a non-event in the Ray family. It is already hot and none of the wonderful traditions of going to the graves and getting together with relatives are practiced here. In the thirty years since Elaine's Moms death she has been to the grave, which is less than three miles from our home, three times. Her Mom is very close to her and she has felt her presence often but not in the cemetery so she feels no need to go there. Star Valley too is my "Home" but it is unlikely that my children would ever come there to pay their respects and in Arizona respect paying is a non-event.

I resent the costs of a traditional funeral and burial even though it is minute fraction of the monies that supported one in life. The billions spent putting people in the grave it seems could have a better use on the needs of the living. I remember Mom telling about when her brother Gerald died. The body was laid out in the family living room and they stayed up putting ice on it though the night until the funeral. I suppose the main expense was the casket which grandpa probably made.

One remembrance from the Fairview cemetery on memorial day when I was maybe ten years old. There was a particularly well endowed older woman there that Dad asked me to go up and ask her what she had done for him when he was a baby. I did not ask so he told me. Being the ninth of ten children apparently Grandmother Bagley was not able to nurse him properly so he got supplemented by this neighbor lady. He claimed that was why he was bigger than the rest of his brothers.

Anyway, that leaves me with the Grover hill fly over or they can sprinkle my ashes up on the hill above our Pine home. My children and grandchildren are sure to visit there. Perhaps none of my wishes will be considered and as Loren said "over my dead body" they will do what they want. On with the joys of living. Errol

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From: Terry
To: Errol
Subject: RE: Random Thoughts
Date: Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:35:29 -0600

Dear Family: As I am the eldest I prefer to contsentrate on living! But in the event I am not twinkled with Christy I have arranged to acquire two lots in Afton from Partsy where Jerry , Ryan, Mom, Dad, Uncle Gene, Aunt Ida and Eugene are resting. I could just as easily have chosen Fairview, but I want to be with "my family". I never lived at the Grover Ranch, so I have no connection with it although I understand Errols affinity with it. I have always considered Star Valley "home". Yes I have lived in California, Washington, Oklahoma and Idaho, but Star Valley is "home". It is where I grew up, worked with dad and Jerry, went to school, went on my first date, kissed a girl for the first time, had my first love and went steady my junior year; graduated from High School, left for and returned from my mission. It is where I gave my wife a diamond and announced our engagement. It is also where Mom & Dad gave us a wedding reception and sent us to the cabin for our honeymoon. But I would really like to be "twinkled" Terry

From: Errol
Sent: Saturday, October 24, 2009 1:16 PM

Subject: RE: Random Thoughts

I am waiting for the wisdom of Terry and Christy on this important topic. I think I will add something John and I can both take some pleasure in. I think I will hear Dads call just as well from the Grove hill as anywhere as that is where I heard it the most in the Grover house. I would like John to do a fly over of the Grover hill and drop my ashes from at least 100ft elevation. I think the prop wash would insure a good even spread. One added memory from that hill was that I shot my one ond only deer just on the top. There were two standing across the first draw. Dad said" You take the one on the left and I will take the one on the right". We dropped them both. Errol

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From: Jule
To: Errol
Subject: Re: Random Thoughts
Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:12:16 -0600

My Oh My but this has taken a serious note!

Errol: don't paint any more lockers and get to Wyoming as soon as you

can to get some fresh air!! Take in all the air you can in Idaho as you go.

Breathe slow. breathe deep. As Dolly Levi said in "Hello dolly": Just keep breathing!!!

Like Merissa, I too was happy that you brought up cremation.

That wasn't incarnation that you were thinking of, was it?

I have long expressed that the thoughts of being under the ground are most distressing tome

LIke Aunt Christy, I just gotta have a way to get out!

I have said to John, maybe just wrap me in a shawl and put me in a tree.

But, as to where? The Ranch in Teton Valley has my heart.

I too love Star Valley, very much, but, my life has been lived with my family in

Teton Valley. I love our ranch. I want to be sprinkled in a bed

of natural wildflowers on the hill with the Tetons ever visible.

I would like all of you to join me, as that's whar we are:

a varied and wonderful family of wild flowers with mountains

to climb or fly over or walk through.

Now, on with the joy of life while we are living!

Julie of the South China Sea

On Oct 22, 2009, at 9:44 PM, Errol Bagley wrote:

Dear Family,

You must understand that I spend five hours a day [90 miles] driving school bus. Bus driving only uses 37% of your brain except at intersections [150 per day] when it can go up to 65%. I therefore have time to think of the meaning of life and of death with the other parts of my brain while driving. Today I was thinking about death and particularly where I would like to be buried if I could be buried anywhere and not confined to a cemetery . I would ask each of you to think about your answer to that question before you read mine.......................

I decided that I would like to be buried on the dry farm on top of the hill behind the Grover Ranch house. I used to be opposed to cremation but I have mellowed to that idea and I would not mind if my ashes were spread up on that hill. Grover has many great memories for me. It is where I came into my own in young manhood. I loved the ranch. My High School years were good. It was on that hill that we baled hauled and staked a 1000 bales one day. That was a lot of hay in those days. I was watching the bale counter and immediately told Dad when it hit 1000 as we had never done that before. I thought he might call it a day. He duly noted the fact and kept on baling.

I saw an arcticle about a burial place where no caskets or markers were allowed. The bodies were just wrapped in a blanket and put in the ground. A geo-marker was put in the ground so the location could be identified electronically in the future and the body would speedily return to mother earth.

I am not discounting how much I enjoy going to the cemetery and visiting the place of our loved ones final resting place. It is very special to me. I would be interested in your thoughts on this subject if you care to share them.

Errol

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The Good Life

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Dear Family, For those of you in the mist of making a living, raising children, and finding love I salute you. I have had a great life but there is no part of it that I need to go back and live over.

I find I am most satisfied with being older and having a great store of memories that I can access from my hard drive and relive in my mind if I wish and I do regularly.

To live with the pleasure of my wife, children, and grandchildren is reward enough for whatever good I may have done thus far. It goes by very quickly and each stage needs to be savored even in its challenges.

I share this with you in hopes that it will be an encoragement in whatever stage you are in to live it to the fullest. Then, when you get older like me you will have both posterity and good memories. Love Dad

The Cat Man and the Inner city

We live just four blocks from the Arizona Temple. It is one of the most visited spots in Arizona.  Unfortunately it is no longer the best part of Mesa, which brings me to the cat man. Some months ago at the end of our street on Horne a man set up shop feeding cats. He arrives before dawn and stays for hours feeding cats from the neighborhood. He appears to check them off on a list he keeps and carefully feeds and holds each cat till he is satisfied that all have been accounted for. The cat man is very thin wears a safari hat, cargo pants, and has plastic bags tied all over his bike. I am told he is well educated but for some reason has dropped out of mainstream society.

 

We also have Dizzy who has haunted Main Street for decades now. He carries a cross and a bible, is usually listening to music and does dances and makes unusual hand gestures as he performs crossing the intersections mostly at Stapley and Main. He is getting older and gaining weigh but still keeps up a fairy vigorous pace. Years ago I saw him dancing at Mesa Drive and Main with what appeared to be a just a large diaper on. I called the police.

 

We also used to have a long legged prostitute that patrolled Horne between Main and Brown. She is missing this year.

 

There is of course Bob of Third Street. Bob has more jokes and the greatest sense of humor of anyone I know.  He works for Ellsworth and serves many of the widows in the area mowing their lawns and taking out their trash.

 

Such is the flavor and texture of the inner city.

Random Thoughts on my Final Resting Place

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Dear Family, 
 
You must understand that I spend five hours a day [90 miles] driving school bus. Bus driving only uses 37% of your brain except at intersections [150 per day] when it can go up to 65%. I therefore have time to think of the meaning of life and of death with the other parts of my brain while driving. Today I was thinking about death and particularly where I would like to be buried if I could be buried anywhere and not confined to a cemetery . I would ask each of you to think about your answer to that question before you read mine.......................
 
I decided that I would like to be buried on the dry farm on top of the hill behind the Grover Ranch house. I used to be opposed to cremation but I have mellowed to that idea and I would not mind if my ashes were spread up on that hill. Grover has many great memories for me. It is where I came into my own in young manhood. I loved the ranch. My High School years were good. It  was on that hill that we baled hauled and staked a 1000 bales one day. That was a lot of hay in those days. I was watching the bale counter and immediately told Dad when it hit 1000 as we had never done that before. I thought he might call it a day. He duly noted the fact and kept on baling.
 
I saw an arcticle about a burial place where no caskets or markers were allowed. The bodies were just wrapped in a blanket and put in the ground.  A geo-marker was put in the ground so the location could be identified electronically in the future and the body would speedily return to mother earth.
 
I am not discounting how much I enjoy going to the cemetery and visiting the place of our loved ones final resting place. It is very special to me. I would be interested in your thoughts on this subject if you care to share them. Errol

I am waiting for the wisdom of Terry and Christy on this important topic. I think I will add something John and I can both take some pleasure in. I think I will hear Dads call just as well from the Grove hill as anywhere as that is where I heard it the most in the Grover house. I would like John to do a fly over of the Grover hill and drop my ashes from at least 100ft elevation. I think the prop wash would insure a good even spread. One added memory from that hill was that I shot my one ond only deer just on the top. There were two standing across the first draw. Dad said" You take the one on the left and I will take the one on the right". We dropped them both. Errol
 

From Terry
Dear Family:  As I am the eldest I prefer to contsentrate on living!    But in the event I am not twinkled with Christy I have arranged to acquire two lots  in Afton from Partsy where Jerry , Ryan, Mom, Dad, Uncle Gene, Aunt Ida and Eugene are resting.  I could just as easily have chosen Fairview, but I want to be with "my family".  I never lived at the Grover Ranch, so I have no connection with it although I understand Errols affinity with it.   I have always   considered  Star Valley  "home".   Yes I have lived in California, Washington, Oklahoma and Idaho, but Star Valley is  "home".  It is where I grew up, worked with dad and Jerry, went to school, went on my first date, kissed a girl for the first time, had my first love and went steady my junior year; graduated from High School,  left for and returned from my mission.  It is where I gave my wife a diamond and announced our engagement.  It is also where Mom  & Dad gave us a wedding reception and sent us to the cabin for our honeymoon.   But I would really like to be "twinkled"        Terry

From Errol
One final thought on "The final resting place" here on earth and then I will give this a "rest".
I thought Terry gave the best summary of reasons to be buried in a certain place. I have lived most of my life in Arizona. Memorial Day in Arizona is almost a non-event in the Ray family. It is already hot and none of the wonderful traditions of going to the graves and getting together with relatives are practiced here. In the thirty years since Elaine's Moms death she has been to the grave, which is less than three miles from our home, three times. Her Mom is very close to her and she has felt her presence often but not in the cemetery so she feels no need to go there. Star Valley too is my "Home" but it is unlikely that my children would ever come there to pay their respects and in Arizona respect paying is a non-event.
 
I resent the costs of a traditional funeral and burial even though it is minute fraction of the monies that supported one in life. The billions spent putting people in the grave it seems could have a better use on the needs of the living. I remember Mom telling about when her brother Gerald died. The body was laid out in the family living room and they stayed up putting ice on it though the night until the funeral. I suppose the main expense was the casket which grandpa probably made.
 
One remembrance from the Fairview cemetery on memorial day when I was maybe ten years old. There was a particularly well endowed older woman there that Dad asked me to go up and ask her what she had done for him when he was a baby. I did not ask so he told me. Being the ninth of ten children apparently Grandmother Bagley was not able to nurse him properly so he got supplemented by this neighbor lady. He claimed that was why he was bigger than the rest of his brothers.
 
Anyway, that leaves me with the Grover hill fly over or they can sprinkle my ashes up on the hill above our Pine home. My children and grandchildren are sure to visit there. Perhaps none of my wishes will be considered and as Loren said "over my dead body" they will do what they want. On with the joys of living.  Errol

 

800 temple lockers

Some weeks ago I learned that during the two week Oct. temple closer they wanted all of the lockers and stalls painted in the Mesa Arizona Temple dressing rooms. That would be 800 lockers four to a stall. The best advise I got while researching this project was figure a good price double it and pray you do not get it. I did so, but my prayers were not answered. I got it. Elaine headed up the prep and clean up crew. All temple worthy of course. We used miles of tape paper and plastic. The paint was a nasty two part epoxy that had only a 4 hour pot life before it turned to stone. I lost one $200 hose and gun during the project for not cleaning it our properly between sessions. An industrial fan was set up in one of the emergency exits and ran 24 hours a day while we were working to draw the vapors out of the temple. You could smell it all the way across the parking lot. I could only paint for a couple of hours at a time before I had to leave and air out. I'm not sure how many brain cells I lost in the two weeks. They paint these lockers every ten years. I will not be bidding on them next time at any price.  Errol 

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Windows 7: Simplify your PC. Learn more. 

The Stop Arm

Next to commercial air travel riding on a school bus may be the safest form of transportation in the U.S. An average of 20 students die each year in school transportation related traffic accidents. Of those, only 5 die while on the bus. The rest loose their lives, as pedestrians coming to or away from the bus. Compared to the 50,000 teenage driving deaths in the U.S. each year, some of which are students driving to and from school, this is an amazing low number.

This enviable safely record is in no small part due to the many rules related to school bus transportation. Not the least of these is the stop arm and related flashing lights. It is a misdemeanor to pass a stopped school bus with red lights flashing in either direction if there is no raised median between you and the bus. A misdemeanor is when you go before a judge and he decides if you pay a lot of money, a really lot of money, or just go to jail and not on a school bus. People pass my stop arm every day, sometimes five or six at a time.

Mesa was laid out by the Mormon Fathers with wide streets. Some have four traffic lanes and some have six traffic lanes with a center turn lane and bicycle lanes next to the curb. If it weren’t for the power lines and the cars you could comfortably land medium sized aircraft on many of the streets. If my brother John lived near Mesa I’m sure, he would have taken advantage of these many landing opportunities and not be confined to the freeways and fields of Idaho. It is understandable that cars approaching a stopped bus with five traffic lanes between them and the bus feel little need to stop.

There is a form that we can fill out with the cars license #, description of the car, time of day, and give it to the police. The state supposedly sends the driver a stern warning. I go for more instant gratification with stop arm runners. I wait till they get right alongside of the bus and then I apply the air horn. People react in different ways to this bugle mounted on the side of the bus they have just passed. Some quickly bring the vehicle to a stop, several hundred feet ahead of the bus and wait for you to unload the students. Nice effort….. Some tap their brakes, so that you can see their brake lights as they go by as some sort of acknowledgment, that they will for sure, stop at the next bus they come to. Others just honor you with a one-fingered salute.

Three examples of recent stop arm runners;

The Three Car Three Bus Slalom

One morning as I am approaching my Mckellips and Stapley pick up, I lit up the bus with no less than two sets of stop lights, four overhead flashing reds and two flashing reds on the stop arm. This morning two other bused approach me coming the opposite direction as I came to a stop. They of course stop and turn on their flashing overhead amber lights. Not to be deterred by this wattage three cars sped between all three of these forty-footers. I went for my on my air horn, and the buses across the street used their regular horns. I think some stopped cars even joined in with their horns. This had to be like driving though a pumpkin patch at Christmas time with a band playing. I feel sure someone in one of those cars said “What’s the deal with those big yellow trucks and their flashing lights and horns”?

The Mormon Mommy

Now I’m just guessing on this one, but she was driving a Tahoe full of kids. Maybe she was just the neighborhood Den Mother. This is my only stop where students could walk in front of the bus even though they do not. This ‘sister’ approached the bus slowly as we where in her neighborhood and then she drove right under the flashing stop arm while talking on her cell phone. I gave her the benefit of my “busy mothers in Zion pass” and did not use the air horn on her.

The Riding Lawn Mower

Val Vista & McClellan 3:05 P.M./ Four lanes / Busy street / My longest student stop/ Fifteen students get off. I watch for them here, as it is the number one place for stop arm runners on my route. Most of them come from behind, but not this day. This day it came unexpectedly from the front. A man on a riding lawn mower was coming towards me at full speed [5mph] across the street in the bicycle lane. As he got across from me he seemed confused as to what the rules were with riding lawn mowers and stopped buses. Not to take a chance he brought the mower to a full stop. I smiled and waved to him.

Happy driving, Mr. “B”

Rule #3 No Eating or Drinking on the Bus

This is a rule I don’t agree with and one that I have not enforced. My first students get on the bus at 6:45 A.M and ride for almost one hour before getting to school. Some of them come with breakfast items in hand that they did not get time to eat at home. One girl came last week with some Cheerios and milk in a zip lock bag. I have no idea how she consumed it.

For a year and a half at the end of each day I have swept out the bus, which usually includes a few wrappers off of food bars, drink cartons, a few crushed cookies and an occasional apple core or banana peel. I was OK with this until the other day when I found a fresh wade of gum on the floor in front of one of the seats. I don’t do gum.

The next morning I reviewed with my passengers the no food and drink rule #3. I reminded them that I had not been enforcing this rule and I really did not care to. I invited them to look on the floor at seat #24 and if the gum was not there it was probably on the bottom of one of their shoes. I displayed a medium sized clear zip lock bag and told them if the food related items that were found on the floor during the next week filled the zip lock bag then the no food and drink rule would go into force.

They were great. There is a wastebasket right by the driver’s seat where they can easily deposit their trash, leaving them no reason to throw it on the floor. By Wednesday I had two cheerios, two empty zip lock bags, and two gum wrappers in my zip lock bag. Even the gum at seat #24 was gone. On Thursday they had a relapse. My bag was half filled at clean up time.

Friday morning before we got to the school I hung my zip lock bag from the passenger mirror for all to see and reminded them that this was the last day and the bag was half full. Like the story of a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it--did it really make any noise? I considered no trash on the floor meant no one ate or drank on the bus.

That night as I swept out the bus there were two clear lollipop wrappers on the floor. What a relief. Surely I did not want to have to follow the no food or drink on the bus rule myself.

Mr. B