Yes, Prof. Sowell, go after this one. Take it down already. It’s caused enough trouble.

New York’s new mayor, Bill de Blasio, in his inaugural speech, denounced people “on the far right” who “continue to preach the virtue of trickle-down economics.” According to Mayor de Blasio, “They believe that the way to move forward is to give more to the most fortunate, and that somehow the benefits will work their way down to everyone else.”
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Years ago, this column challenged anybody to quote any economist outside of an insane asylum who had ever advocated this “trickle-down” theory. Some readers said that somebody said that somebody else had advocated a “trickle-down” policy. But they could never name that somebody else and quote them.
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The “trickle-down” theory cannot be found in even the most voluminous scholarly studies of economic theories — including J.A. Schumpeter’s monumental “History of Economic Analysis,” more than a thousand pages long and printed in very small type.

It is not just in politics that the non-existent “trickle-down” theory is found. It has been attacked in the New York Times, in the Washington Post and by professors at prestigious American universities — and even as far away as India. Yet none of those who denounce a “trickle-down” theory can quote anybody who actually advocated it.

Sowell has already written previously about the ideas of those who have flown off the handle at this statement of his, that there’s no such thing as a prominent political advocate of “trickle-down”:

What I said that set off the crazies was that there is no such thing as “trickle-down” economics. Supposedly those who believe in trickle-down economics want to give benefits to the rich, on the assumption that these benefits will trickle down to the poor.

As someone who spent the first decade of his career researching, teaching and writing about the history of economic thought, I can say that no economist of the past two centuries had any such theory.

Some of those who denounced me for saying that there was no trickle-down theory cited an article by David Stockman years ago — as if David Stockman was the last word, and I should forget everything I learned in years of research because David Stockman said otherwise.

What is often confused with a trickle-down theory is supply-side economics, such as that advocated by Arthur Laffer. That theory is that tax cuts can generate more tax revenue for the government because it changes people’s behavior, causing more economic activity to take place, leading to more taxable income, as well as a faster growing economy.

It is not hard to find examples of when this happened — for example, during the Kennedy administration, among other times and places.

Then he got into something that’s been bugging me for awhile:

If education provides anything, it should be an ability to think — that is, to weigh one idea against an opposing idea, and to use evidence and logic to try to determine what is true and what is false. That is precisely what our schools and colleges are failing to teach today.

It is worse than that. Too many teachers, from the elementary schools to the graduate schools, see their role as indoctrinating students with what these teachers regard as the right beliefs and opinions. Usually that means the left’s beliefs and opinions.

The merits or demerits of those ideas is far less important than whether or not students learn to analyze and weigh those merits and demerits. Educators used to say, “We are here to teach you how to think, not what to think.”

Today, students can spend years in educational institutions, discussing all sorts of issues, without ever having heard a coherent statement of the other side of those issues that differ from what their politically correct teachers say.

…but…I suppose that’s a discussion for another time. Meanwhile…

Those who complain of “trickle-down” policies, and politics, and advocates, who don’t really exist — betray their own skewed understanding of how economics work. I’ve noticed, without fail, that such complaints rely on an underlying premise that a “tax cut” is some kind of a giveaway. That’s a wrong turn there. Once you mistake a nothing as a something, any progression from that point is bound to be wrong. Or let us say, the only shot it has at being correct is by random chance. You’re better off shaking a Magic-8 ball.

Have they lost sight of what used to be a given, that an economy relies on people actually producing things? Do they really think the only reason anybody has anything is because the government “gave” them money, by way of not-taxing them?

In many ways, I am saddened and distressed at this writhing, twisting, mutating societal notion of what is “mainstream” and what is extremist; this is one of the ways. So it’s extremist these days to think that people, by default, deserve to keep the money that they have made, is it. The “mainstream” thought is that all money comes from the government not taxing you. Is it really that bad? I’d like to think not. But these commonplace and popular statements about trickle-down make me worried.

Matt Walsh is ticked off.

After discovering that half of the female Marines can’t meet the minimum physical fitness requirements, usually failing to do three pull-ups, the Corps has decided to delay the standards. This is all part of the process of “equalizing” physical requirements so as to integrate women into combat roles.

Here we have a horrible idea, stacked on top of a bewilderingly idiotic idea, poured over a collection of reckless, ideologically-fueled, irrational, liberal feminist ideas. Basically, an insane idea had sexual relations with a moronic idea and the two gave birth to this idea.
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I disagree with the fools who like to pretend we’re living in a Charlie’s Angels movie, where ladies can shout “girl power” and then kick butt and take names with the best of ‘em.
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I disagree with every single thought process and ideological dogma that goes into creating a scenario where the home of the Few and the Proud is transformed into a place for the Many and the Physically Incapable.

When the DC elite declared their plan to move women into combat positions, supporters of the move tried to assuage the concerns of rational Americans by insisting that physical requirements for combat roles would NOT be altered or adjusted for the sake of women. But rational Americans — being, well, rational — knew from the get-go that this was a lie. Women are not men. Men are uniquely equipped for the physical and mental rigors of combat. Women are not. This fact, while scientific and undeniable, seems quite insulting to the legions of childish Utopianists who’ve been hypnotized by Disney movies and college professors into believing that women can “do anything men can do.” Anything. And, in order to please these types, military brass will cave and kowtow, eventually rigging the fitness tests so as to achieve a paradise where our daughters and wives can charge into combat and be mercilessly slaughtered.

And the rational Americans were right. Again.

One of the (Army) Sergeants at work was telling me this is a falsehood, that the Corps is not delaying the standards and the girls actually have to do SIX pull-ups, right-freakin’-now. Seemed to know what he’s talking about…but…dunno. Seems to me we’re going about this all the wrong way at any rate. Let’s say the “Charlie’s Angels” people turn out to be right and women can meet every physical challenge that men can meet. That’s provably false, but let’s grant it anyway. Can’t we all agree, even given that, that they’ve reached the right conclusion by going the wrong way?

Can’t we all agree that they did not pick out samples of men and women of significant quantity, and hold stopwatches by them, clipboard in hand, as they did their squats, sit-ups, pull-ups, 2-mile runs, etc.

No, they didn’t do that. They didn’t run tests. They decided ahead-of-time, before even so much as a single speck of data was in, that WomenCanDoEverythingMenCanDo. Then, they felt obliged to follow suit on that, re-announcing this incorrect opinion every time the question came up. Can’t we just acknowledge that’s how it works? The problem isn’t that this is wrong — although it is. The problem is that once people invest their egos in such things, they are easily seduced into terrible ideas.

And we’ve got a lot of that going around lately. The problem isn’t that Barack Obama is a bad President of the United States, or that everyone who’s black would be equally terrible. The problem is that there is so much valuable information being tossed out, by those determined to toss out any evidence that even superficially suggests how much Barack Obama sucks at His job.

It’s also probably not true that gay married couples are any more “loving” than straight married couples, or that they can provide better homes for children. Once again, people who think so didn’t decide that by visiting a thousand married gay couples and a thousand married straight couples and meticulously comparing them. They just refuse to consider any other possibility. That’s the wrong way to go deciding things.

That all is just obvious. Isn’t it?

The Blaze:

Ohio Man Who Raped 6-Month-Old Baby to Death Wants Mercy

Condemned killer Steven Smith’s argument for mercy isn’t an easy one. Smith acknowledges he intended to rape his girlfriend’s 6-month-old daughter but says he never intended to kill the baby.

The girl, Autumn Carter, died because Smith was too drunk to realize his assault was killing her, Smith’s attorneys argued in court filings with the Ohio Parole Board, which heard the case Tuesday. And Ohio law is clear, they say: A death sentence requires an intent to kill the victim.

“The evidence suggests that Autumn’s death was a horrible accident,” Smith’s attorneys, Joseph Wilhelm and Tyson Fleming, said in a written argument prepared for the board.

They continued: “Despite the shocking nature of this crime, Steve’s death sentence should be commuted because genuine doubts exist whether he even committed a capital offense.”

Smith, 46, was never charged with rape, meaning the jury’s only choice was to convict or acquit him of aggravated murder, his attorneys say.

However, rape was included in the indictment against Smith as one of the factors making him eligible for the death penalty. Under Ohio law, an aggravated murder committed in the course of another crime – such as burglary, robbery, arson or the killing of a police officer or child – is an element that can make someone eligible for capital punishment.

But, the law is clear: Eligibility for the death penalty relies on intent to kill. Perhaps it was there, but where’s the proof. If the glove don’t fit you must acquit, or something…

And, this is the right thing to do, I’m sure the attorneys will say. In America, everyone is entitled to the very best defense before the court they might have. All of the logic is durable enough, although book-driven and without any human intuition applied…no common sense…so it leads, step by step, to the conclusion that they should be there, where they are, in the courtroom, arguing “You must spare my client because he did not actually mean to kill this six-month-old baby girl he was violently raping.” (The book-driven common-sense-devoid durable logic also leads, step by step, to the conclusion that the jury will have to do that, there is no other valid verdict to hand down.)

Their parents must be so proud!

What’s the take-away here? There is a faint glimmer of validity to the argument that the lawyers present. All it proves to me, though, is that the lawyers are not the entire problem. Prosecutors must prove intent to kill, according to the law. A problem emerges because Smith was drunk as a skunk, and in a rage. But I cannot help but wonder: Is that an edge-case of some sort? What’s the population of accused murderers who are prosecuted under Ohio law, with the prosecutors asking for the death penalty? Are they a reasoned and sane lot? Do they tend to do crisply and clearly defined things, things that are easily proven, signifying their intent to kill?

Like fill out a form?

The problem is with the argument itself. It’s there to be made, and that means the lawyers are going to have a point when they say it’s their job to argue it. Since the problem is in the argument being there to be made, the root cause is the law. There are a lot of laws like this because there are a lot of people who want to make laws like this.

Make it harder to get people executed. That will somehow lead to good things.

It’s not always so.

One of the things the 2006 Superman pre-reboot half-reboot did right, was to summarize the whole legend in under a minute…

Ooh. I kinda like that. Makes this a sort of Republican movie: The bad guy is into “sharing,” thinks there’s something wrong with the good guy because he won’t share.

Actually, that feeds into why Superman is my favorite Superhero. The origin. Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain America, Fantastic Four, The Flash, Spider Man…they all put themselves in certain situations. Yes, external factors exerted a motivation on them, but they enjoyed the benefit of choice. I’ve always identified with Superman because he never consciously selected a single thing, ever, not once.

And every single adventure the Man of Steel has, is centered around the singular question of: How can I use my gifts to effect the best possible outcome?

Meanwhile, jealous little people talk smack about him because he has ability, and for no other reason. But his abilities are still limited. He makes his way on the salary of a senior reporter for the Daily Planet, walking to work from his humble apartment at 344 Clinton Street, Metropolis, Apartment 3-D. On some level, I’ve been identifying with this. My entire life, really.

The latest: I’m still re-adapting to bachelorhood after my wife lit out of here in December 21st. Her duty as doting daughter is fulfilled, her father passed away surrounded by friends and family, December 29, at 11:39 at night local time, or something very close to that. That happens to be — in a cruel twist of fate — our first wedding anniversary. It’s now January 5th, he’s cremated, she’s ready to bring back a portion to scatter into the Pacific Ocean. (He always wanted to come, but was scared of our earthquakes, supposedly.)

But, the blizzard. She’s trapped. She’s lost her Dad, I can’t do anything to comfort her except talk to her on the phone, and she’s trapped.

As for me…oh, can we please get this one thing straight? I DO NOT HAVE A GIRLFRIEND IN CLOVIS, CA. Yes, I did head down there. You know why? Because they had an economical but high-quality hotel, and Starbucks, and Hooters, all within one square mile of each other. That’s it, and that’s all.

My Monday-to-Friday brain cycles have been entirely devoted to work…I’ve got my own stuff I’m doing, on evenings and weekends, and lately I’ve hit a bit of an impasse, even though what I’m trying to implement (for free, with nobody cutting me paychecks for accomplishing anything, let alone just trying) is vastly, vastly, many orders of magnitude simpler than other things I’ve managed to get done. The kitchen is a fucking goddamn mess. The car is a mess. Everything’s filthy. I miss my wife terribly. And when everything is completely quiet, it still feels like there’s a John Phillips Sousa band playing in my head because I can’t concentrate on what I’m doing.

So, yeah. I clock out and actually book a hotel room. Take my Trek 7300 with me. Apart from the bike, it’s really no different from what Christopher Reeve did in Somewhere In Time…except my woman is separated from me by distance, not by time. It’s just old-fashioned writer’s block.

In this case it breaks down pretty simply. I have two problems. One, I needed to figure out how to instantiate a new object with symbol-lookup, every time a “call” command was invoked within a new scripting language I’ve kinda sorta been inventing, in order to implement an effective regression test against a math library I put together. Two, I’ve been coming to grips with a rule that I had not confronted until now: You can’t put anything in a union that isn’t POD. Well, I solved problem #1 between 1:30 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. in my hotel room. Then, I solved it some more between 6:00 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. at the local Starbucks. Problem #2 I knocked out in ten minutes after I returned home. See? That’s how it works. You can sit at home with your thumb up your butt wondering what to do, FUCKING ENDLESSLY, or you can get away, spend a little bit of time and a little bit of cash, and solve the goddamn mutherfucking problem.

I’ve been around the block with this kind of stuff, I know how it goes. To me, it’s all part of the routine. You try little things to get past the barricade, then you go on to bigger things. Occasionally, it rises to the magnitude of renting a hotel like Christopher Reeve did. You just do whatever it takes.

But, I’m on Facebook. And all our friends know about what’s been going on. “Why are you in Clovis??” “Why are you in Clovis??”

I AM IN CLOVIS BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO BE TOILING OVER THIS STUPID FUCKING BUG AFTER MY WIFE COMES HOME AND I’D MUCH RATHER BE WATCHING TEEVEE SHOWS WITH HER SITTING NEXT TO ME. That’s why I’m in Clovis. Or, a few hours ago, was in Clovis.

Because I’d much rather be watching teevee with my wife by my side. Even though what we’d be watching, in all likelihood, is NCIS. I’m rather burned out on that. But I’d lunge for it in a heartbeat, if it meant I could watch it with my wife. I happen to like her. I miss her. And…truth be told, I’m wishing I spent a bit more time watching her “stupid” teevee shows with her, before she had to take off because her father’s vital organs started shutting down.

All of that is a digression, though. I come back home to find out: The Niners won. In spite of that — perhaps, because of that? — none of my Facebook friends want to offer anything by way of: Why can you not declare a C++ object to be a part of a union, even though you can declare it within a struct? They’d rather think about football.

Well. Who can blame them!

But there is something going on here that concerns me, and more than a little bit. I’m a child of the seventies and eighties. Contrary to what has been thought by the many, many liberals who have “debated” me on the Internet over the years, I am not the product of old-money. There were no resources available to send me to college, and if there were, I did not have the GPA to justify it. I have never been college material. But I was raised to solve problems. I did that, and life has been good to me. I am not a candidate to be interviewed on Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs…although, I should be, and if it were to happen, I would consider it a very high honor. I do not wear my first name on a badge on my shirt. Although, in my mind’s eye, I do. I do not think of computer programming as any kind of white-collar, let alone savant-intellectual, affair. I never have. I have always thought of it as on par with stacking lumber. Just problem-solving. Nothing more than that. More blue-collar than white-collar. Just implementing stuff, so that the people way-up-there who have to make real decisions, can concentrate on those decisions, after I make sure the machines do what they’re supposed to be doing. All these years, on some level, I’ve always thought of myself as a sort of janitor or something.

And, I’ve always thought of myself — always had to think of myself — as the beneficiary of an uncommon bit of good fortune. No, wait. That is an understatement. An historical bit of good fortune. Fantastic fortune. Like, you fire a bullet out of your gun, someone else fires a bullet that hits your bullet and knocks your bullet out of the air. That kind of good fortune.

Since about the seventeenth century or so, we have had this institution we have called “college” that is supposed to — let’s be honest, okay? — put on this good show about trying to educate the masses so everyone can be moar-better-equal, while in reality, laboring tirelessly to preserve and perpetuate a caste system.

The era to which we have become accustomed over the last thirty years, which we are now abandoning, typified by this unforgettable commercial…

…is coming to an end, I sense. My last job interview I was asked three questions — which I aced, but the interview was a fail and probably because I’m too expensive for the gig (since this is all pretty much freshman-knowledge):

What is 2 to the power of 5?

what is 2 to the power of 16?

Please e-mail me a code fragment that will read in a string of characters, reverse it, and output the result to console.

When the above commercial came out, you could ask people in their mid-thirties these questions and, at the very, very least, they might display a sense of intellectual curiosity (even though that would make them baby-boomers): Gosh, yeah, you know I should make an effort to look into that. See, back then everybody understood the concepts: Computers were doing all these wonderful and amazing things, even though at core, all they were doing was distinguishing a zero from a one. All these cool things they did were derivative of that. It fell to humans to figure out how the more complex problems were being successfully puzzled out by machines that, internally, could only resolve that most simplistic problem, distinguishing a zero from a one.

Nowadays, so much more has become possible. And the humans have become stupid — again. The man-in-the-street is no longer intrigued by how complex problems can be made possible by a stupid machine that can’t do anything more than distinguish zeroes from ones. Thirty years later, today’s man-in-the-street sees that all as “geek stuff.” It isn’t something he should make the time to sit down and figure out. Jersey Shore beckons.

I’m coming out of an era in which the seventeenth-century, “college kids rule” model has been upset. I do not have any college experience. At all. Well, save for three quarters of a corporate accounting course at a community college, and that (if memory serves) was all on video. My only real diploma is high school, and that, I think, was a GPA of 2.65 or some such. And yet I am a builder of applications. I have managed requirements for large projects. Huge projects. I have coded my balls off. I have been a project manager. I rose to become the senior engineering resource for a blue-chip company, responsible for deploying all applications throughout the enterprise, of a ten thousand seat wide area network. That is not a testimonial to me being smart, or even to me being bull-headed. It is a testimonial to my blind dumb-ass luck. I had been born, and had come of age, when Prometheus came around with a whole new brand of “fire” to offer to the mortals. It is phenomenally good luck, on the magnitude of a bullet knocking another bullet out of the sky.

Folks, we are fucking blowing it.

These kids growing up now, who are younger than my son, they’re getting the shaft. Good and hard. They should be just like me, each and every one of them. It isn’t happening, because this stuff relies on just a little bit of intellectual curiosity on the part of the moppet. But if the moppet shows just a little bit of this, quicker than you can say “blue pill” he is medicated.

My son has a diagnosis of “severe Autism” because, and only because, his mother wanted him to have one. After an entire decade of everybody arguing about this non-stop, nobody has stepped forward with a good definition of what it is he isn’t supposed to be able to do. It isn’t just him. There’s a whole generation behind this. Kids who aren’t supposed to be taught things, because they can’t handle the emotional trauma of learning to do things they aren’t supposed to be able to learn to do. But the authorities who say so, can’t define what these kids can’t learn how to do. It’s all blind-faith stuff. It’s all manufactured-disability. We found that out, for sure, after driving six hundred miles so we could go to the disposition meeting and find out why my son is being diagnosed. Turns out, there isn’t a shred of real “science” to it at all. I asked the doctor what this “brain” thing was she thought she found, and she said I was “bullying” her, then proceeded to bully me, refusing to answer, refusing to consider, refusing to discuss. So that’s where we are. Pushy women refuse to discuss things, and we project the dysfunction onto the next generations of boys who aren’t showing the proper qualities of malleability. Then we diagnose-it-out-of-the-way. And call it “science,” even though none of the “scientists” can answer any questions.

Manufactured. Disabilities.

And this in the age when high-school graduates can become architects of how everything fits together, when they can dictate how it’s all supposed to work, if they just show some work ethic and take the initiative to figure out cause-and-effect…since no one else is bothering to. Prometheus has come around a second time, to give us fire from the gods. We just told him to go fuck himself sideways. Now we’re going back to our football games, after making sure our kids have been properly medicated…so they don’t develop any of this unhealthy curiosity about complicated numbers and computers and shit…GOOAAAAALLLL!!!!!!!!!!

Revenge of the Nerds? It happened. It came and it went. Now we’re medicating.

We are blowing it. Big time. Words cannot describe.

I miss my wife. My son, too. So much.

I miss the olden days. When strength was strength, something to be adored. When weakness was weakness, something to be abhorred.

I really don’t know what motivates us nowadays. You want me to state it really honestly? I feel like the whole thing has sort of passed me by. I don’t understand why we treat weakness as strength and vice-versa. I’ve got some ideas about it. But, like a lot of old people from our times and from days gone by, I find myself grappling with a newer confusion about it all. I want to stay curious, and to do that, I have to stay humble so I want to stay humble.

But if you forced me to take a guess about it, like, with a gun to my head — I’d say we’ve been losing our way because we’re just too comfortable and we’re just too bored. We’re losing our grip on reality.

She is emblematic of the reason I hate humor nowadays; or, to be pinpoint-precise about it, I loathe what we today often call “humor.” So much of it just isn’t funny, and is not intended to be. We have many among us who are losing their sense of what humor really is, and they may never have understood it. But no, that’s not what I mean by “Silverman effect.”

What I mean by that is: The idea that the “humor” is funny if, and only if, it aims this ridicule and hurt in the right direction. This idea of “I just said something insulting about this class of people, or that particular person, now laugh at my ‘joke’; you owe me“…followed by…”So-and-so hurt my feelings when he made fun of me.” Or said something that wasn’t quite politically correct. Or spiked the Could-Be-Construed-As-O-Meter.

Because Sarah Silverman is not all of this. It’s a phenomenon that is much bigger than her. A lot of people will “laugh” at just about any joke made at Sarah Palin’s expense, provided it is at her expense. As long as it ridicules her, or her son Trig, or Catholics, it’s all the very-best-joke-ever. But those very same people will be all set to get properly horrified if the Duck Dynasty guy says the wrong thing. The Victim class rules must be enforced at all times, oops he said such-and-such, time for some mob justice. Keep rocking the boat until the pariah is properly made a pariah. As long as someone’s career comes to an end over this, the outcome is a good one.

The premise is — has to be — that these people over here have feelings, and those people over there do not. That’s the problem with it. Well, aside from the fact that they’re destroying the very concept of “humor.” And when they’re in mob-justice-mode, they don’t seem to be trying to resolve a problem that came about when the target of wrath opened his mouth. They don’t seem to be climbing out of a hole, or doing what’s unhappily become necessary. They seem to be looking forward to such opportunities. Relishing them. Say something disparaging about a victim class, and quick as you can flip a switch, all of a sudden “everybody” has the right not to be offended. And you just violated it, buster.

But it isn’t everybody. Other people not only are missing that right; any & all comments made about them that are somehow negative, are automatically “funny.” As long as they’re the target. That seems to be the thinking.

Daniel Greenfield writes at Canada Free Press:

“There is no more neutrality in the world,” said Black Panther leader, civil rights activist and fun-loving rapist; Eldridge Cleaver. “You either have to be part of the solution, or you’re going to be part of the problem—there ain’t no more middle ground.”

We live in Eldridge Cleaver’s world now, a world with no more middle ground. Where not doing anything does not mean you will be left alone.
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The average American still holds the fanciful belief that, if he isn’t annoying anyone, he should be left alone. To the people running his country, this is as bizarre and unworkable as Phrenology or the Geocentric theory or handing out universal health care without also compelling everyone to buy it.

Hat tip to The Barrister at Maggie’s Farm.

About that: A bit more at Gerard Van der Leun’s American Digest, where the best comment of the year has already been picked out:

Stop looking for The One way to fight back. To make up for not fighting back we imagine we, or someone that will fight on our behalf, will find the one unguarded and vital target where we can attack and win in an instant. Politically, we fantasize about finding the weak spot in The Death Star and firing a kill shot.

The Left didn’t bring the country under their control that way. The Left has published books on how to fight the system. They fought the system. They now own the system. The Left waged a Long March through the culture. We keep engaging in Short Retreats to the next “gated-community” that we hope will protect us from liberal domination.

Start fighting in small ways, anywhere, and it will give you confidence to fight more and the tide will turn IF liberals find they can’t rely on never finding opposition. Use direct language. Call them communists, racists, sexist, traitors, etc. You don’t gain respect by speaking in moderate language about the people that are setting fire to this country. This isn’t Sunday School. This is a Civil War. The Left already knows it. They already fight like it’s a Civil War. You might as well face up to it.

You know their ideas are bad ones, because they’re most likely to look like good ideas when things are left (kept) undefined — when everything remains unclear and vague.

Good ideas stand up to inspection. Theirs don’t even stand up to proper description.

The graphic below went up on the sidebar Sunday night, about twenty minutes to nine at night, Pacific time.

I’d just taken a call from Mrs. Freeberg, out in New York. Her father had just passed away, surrounded by my Mother-in-law, her, and the rest of that immediate family. End of a tough, tough couple of weeks I guess…and, that’s how we spent our “real” first anniversary, 12/29/13. Life shakes out that way sometimes.

I’ll always remember you, my dear friend. As much gratitude as any son-in-law ever had toward a man for raising a girl into a wonderful woman, that’s what I have for you. Godspeed, Graeme.