Dedicated to the people of Virginia Tech.

We tread the paths we walked in youth.
We see the granite walls of gray.
The hallowed halls our forebears walked.
the fields of green they marched and drilled.

Still pond reflects, that things have changed.
But quiet hills remain the same.
The whispering wind adds her refrain.
His peace remains, through time unchanged.

How are we ever going to live?
How will we all complete the journey?
We must endure, we must survive.
For those that have been left behind.















Dedicated to the families of the victims of 4-16-07
And to the people of Southwestern Virginia

Mom

Sunday brings another Mother's Day.
Our mom left us on July 8, 1996.
She was the middle of three girls, and also had three brothers, one older, two younger.

Life in the twenties and thirties on small farms in America wasn't easy.
But to listen to mom and her kin, their life wasn't too far removed from the fictional Walton family.

My grand dad was a fine, tough but gentle man. My granny was quite a woman.
She had to be to raise that brood!



Mom and I in 1954. I play just as well now.


















In later years when I finally reached adulthood, some of my aunts and uncles would
tell stories about mom in her youth. She was always keeping the family waiting
while she did last minute primping. (That was no surprise, standard routine on Sunday
morning was all of us waiting in the car for mom)

My uncle Pat, the youngest and a 'surprise' took especial delight in tormenting her.
He would wait until she had every hair in place, then sneak up behind her and muss it.
My granny would still get on her for being too slow and plodding when she was in her seventies and mom in her forties. That was fun to watch!

She truly drove dad nuts at times. But that was mutual, to be sure.
Opposites do attract, a fussy Virginia girl and a detail oriented, type A engineer from West by Golly Virginia.

She was never in the best of health, having a frail constitution from her youth.
Raising me, my sister Lily and our very special sister Katy was no easy task.
There were no resources to speak of for Down's Syndrome children in the sixties.
But the two of them never considered raising her in any other fashion than as one of the family.
She had her stubborn, obstinate moments as well, being genetically speaking a full Harvey, with all of the inherent attributes.

When I was in Jr High, mom decided that she wanted to work part time.
Dad worked incredibly hard, but was never paid what he should have been due to a lack of formal education.
She wanted to help out. Mom worked until age 65, then returned home to Blacksburg.

Our son was her only grandchild, and she doted on him.
We were fortunate they were able to spend time together.
She saw him play baseball (he swings the bat just like your dad!), and knew he was destined for something really special in his life.

Her last few years were tough on her. A serious head injury due to a fall affected her in more ways than we realized.
But she never lost her faith, and kept her Savior at the center of her life.
That's the most important thing a mother can do for her children and grandchildren.

Hope you and dad (and all of those in both families that have gone on before us)
have wonderful mothers day.

I know your hair is perfect! All of your children and your grandson love and miss you.


Mom and her first born. Yes, all of the pictures are of me, I'm the oldest and I can do what I want! It is my blog, after all.

Mothers Day and other reminders...

Do not forget (that is if you enjoy life and health!) your own mother, if you are fortunate enough to have her with you still.

Also do not forget the mother of your children. Unless you enjoy sleeping on the couch.

I myself purchased Queen Felicia a nice metal yard cart to haul around all of the various and sundry plants, mulch, rocks, etc etc that she enjoys working with.

Soldier Boy is taking his mother shopping and then to lunch tomorrow, and has promised to get up in time ('twill be a miracle!) on Sunday to go to church with her.

He looooves shopping with his Mom, and yes I am being quite sardonic on that topic.

On a trip to the mall while in HS, he commented, after waiting outside Vicki's Secret for an interminable length of time, "I became old enough to drink while you were in there!"

Hotel rooms

Once again, I sit here in a hotel room staring at the LCD on my laptop.

Vista North of Scottsdale, AZ last fall.

A show about Henry the Eighth drones on in the background on the TV.

This time of year is the worst for 'road' TV, too early to care about baseball, the Stanley Cup and NBA playoffs hold no interest, and football is still

many months away.

I haven't wound down enough to grab my book, so here I sit.This blog thing may just save what's left of my sanity when I am traveling!

Today I drove a fellow from my company around the campus of Virginia Tech here in Blacksburg. It was my first visit since the shooting last month.

Some of you may know that my family is from the area originally.

My mom was raised out in the country nearby, and my dad about 50 miles away in WV.

Everything looked the same, but then it will never again look quite the same to me.

I did notice campus police in evidence on several occasions, where in the past you seldom saw them out walking on campus.

Tomorrow we play golf (in my case very badly) in a tournament hosted by the IT departement at Tech. Then Wednesday we will be doing a presentation on campus for our business contacts.

I'm sure that I will have more to share after that.

All over town and on campus you see "VT will survive" "Hokies are tough!" and other such messages on car windows and in storefronts.

It makes me very proud of the people from the area.

We are from tough pioneer stock, and no evil can bring us down for long!

What are you going to do with it?

Without going into great detail, we started attending Sunday services again on Palm Sunday.




Our Plum Tree at it's full Glory

My first criteria in choosing prospective assemblies, do they have a web site?
(We absolutely HATE the process of visiting churches, and 'weeding out the wheat from the tares')
Our second criteria, do they have early services?
We were determined not to go back to the 'old ways' of our youth, ie; Sunday School at 10, service at 11, and the preacher had better not go past noon, etc. etc.
I found only two such churches within 10 miles or so of us.
We are in a very old fashioned, traditional area.
After reading their statement of purpose, the blurbs on their staff, and determining that their beliefs matched our own (an extra point, did they preach solely from the K.J.V., or were they more focused on actually teaching their people than doing things the way they have always been done) we decided to visit the church closest to us.

The people were friendly without being overbearing.
And to quote a favorite philosopher of mine, Marx (that's Groucho, not Karl!)
"I would never become a member of any club that would have me!"
they accepted we two children of the sixties.

We both noticed the obvious musical talent for such a small church (maybe 200 members)
The humility was just as obvious.

The pastor evidenced a true compassion and humility himself.
He was obviously not in it for himself, and there was no pulpit pounding, screaming or other theatrics.

A common thread in all of his messages has been to challenge his congreation.
Sermons are delivered without apologies or excess adornment.
He closes each with with, "Now, what are you going to do with it?"
In other words, I've given you the message given and applied to me, now deal with it yourselves.

We are both in the process of dealing with it.

In all of our lives (if we are honest with ourselves) there come times of spiritual introspection.
We must examine the personal tenets of our own faith.
I distinctly remember doing so after losing my dad at 22, during our toughest years in Texas, and just recently.
The Apostle Paul saved his greatest praise for one of his early seedling churches that
"eagerly searched the scriptures and examined them" to prove what he had taught them was true.

We must all continually do the same.

Even old Uncle Dinosaur and the lovely Queen Felicia are in the process of once again doing that very thing.

So we want to encourage the youngsters in our family who are just now embarking on their own paths.

Rock on, fellow Pilgrims, and "Keep the Faith!"

Meet Csonk (AKA Prince Smoochie

Who can resist those big brown eyes?

As I mentioned previously, we added a new member to the family
last Christmas time.
His name is Csonk (in honor of Larry Csonka of the undefeated '72 Dolphins)
We were picking out our Dinosaur family Christmas tree, and looked into a large
cardboard carton placed there for our 'convenience'

Inside were two adorable (and already large) Black Labrador puppies. Free!
One lady had already laid claim to the little female pup.
Csonk looked at me with pleading eyes, and I knew I was done for.
We paid for the tree and some firewood, they delivered it, and the Queen and I
went to lunch.
I was sitting there silently eating my Taco, and the Queen said
"You are going back to get that dog, aren't you?"
I had to admit I'd been considering it.
"Well, if he's still there, then we'll probably bring him home"

He was indeed still there, and I said to myself "Sucker!"
I even pictured the big Lollypop looming over my head, ala Bugs Bunny.

We have always owned Shelties, and still have our six year old, Bonnie.

So having a small horse at Jurassic Park has been a learning experience for us.
Queen Felicia's Chiropractor is happy, as she has been back several times to deal
with an aggravated shoulder injury from years back.
Csonk is as strong as his namesake!
But he is a gentle giant, and totally useless as a guard dog.
To put it kindly, Csonk is a lover, not a fighter.
Something as benign as the printer in my office sends him running for cover,
barking and hiding behind momma's skirts.

He is just finishing up his second PetsMart 'school'.
The socialization with other canines is to his liking, but when he gets tired of
his lessons, he just lays down wherever he is and looks at the instructor.

He loves to give you 'smooches', which are more safely delivered when he is behind
the rail of our deck.
Otherwise his smooches more closely resemble head butts.

He is a natural born clown, and none of us can imagine life without him now.
Soldier B0y has a particular affinity for him.
Two rough-housing young bucks. Two of a kind!

I guess I will have to give Bonnie equal time in a future post, or she'll sulk.

Felicia getting a 'Smooch' from Csonk.

April 27th, another anniversary

Bridge on I77 near Princeton WV




My dad, Jim Harvey in 1954
The little chubby fellow is me.




April 27th is also an anniversary of sorts for me.
We lost my dad on that Tuesday in 1976.
The head of the family, the only son of Arthur and Ollie Harvey,
brother, father, husband, WWII veteran and still today the most
decent, honest and unselfish man I've ever known.

He was far too young when he left us just two weeks short of his 55th birthday.
That, unfortunately was common for men of his "Greatest" generation.

Born in 1921, he survived the Great Depression, putting in a man's days work from the age of 10. Then WWII called him away from the farm he loved. He and millions of other men and women answered the call to save the entire world from unspeakable evil and tyranny.

He was seriously injured and discharged from the Army in extremely poor health before his unit deployed to North Africa.
He bore the pains of those injuries all of his life, and never experienced full health again.

You would never have known that in trying to keep up with him!
When I got up to go to High School at 6:30am, he was normally already gone. We never saw him before six pm for supper.
Back in those days, most folks worked half a day on Saturday too.

He never complained, and never did much of anything for himself.
That wasn't his way, or their way in those days.
We could learn much of self sacrifice and common sense from them.

My parents were living in Princeton, WV when I was born.
The picture above is of a bridge that still spans I77 near Princeton.
At the time it was built it was one of the longest bridges of it's type in the world.
Those were pre-OHSA days.
Dad told me once that part of his job entailed inspecting the steel as construction progressed.
How? Two four by eight plywood planks were placed side by side across the spans.
Dad then walked them and inspected the rivets and joints, over the open gorge beneath.
Talk about working without a net!

I visited the bridge with him once (if you are heading southbound on I77, there is an overlook, that's where I shot this picture)
I asked "Dad, how in the world did you make yourself go out there?"
He grinned and said "I had a little blue eyed boy to feed!"

Now I see that wry grin emanating from our son.

He is a lot like you, Dad. You'd be pretty proud of him.

We still miss you.