We Are the World
Loved it then. Love it still. The last recording session for the song was held on January 28, 1985 and was all over the news the next few days. Chris Havins was born on January 29, 1985. Guess what newspaper article is in his baby book?
Wiki says
“We Are the World” is a song and charity single originally recorded by the supergroup USA for Africa in 1985. It was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, and produced by Quincy Jones and Michael Omartian for the album We Are the World. With sales in excess of 20 million copies, it is one of the fewer than thirty all-time singles to have sold 10 million (or more) copies worldwide.
Following Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” project in the UK, an idea for the creation of an American benefit single for African famine relief came from activist Harry Belafonte, who, along with fundraiser Ken Kragen, was instrumental in bringing the vision to reality. Several musicians were contacted by the pair, before Jackson and Richie were assigned the task of writing the song. Following several months of working together, the duo completed the writing of “We Are the World” one night before the song’s first recording session, in early 1985. The last recording session for the song was held on January 28, 1985. The historic event brought together some of the most famous artists in the music industry at the time.
25 Things to do with a Wiggly Toddler Boy
When I was younger I thought I had been cursed because I had two younger brothers.
As an adult – and mom – I realized what a blessing The Boys were to me. All the dumb boy things Chris did when he was little? I’d already seen before while my poor sisters-in-law were befuddled having grown up in households without boys. I think having had a little brother has helped Katie out with Colton, too. Boys tend to take up more energy than girls because they have so much energy.
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I liked these 25 Things to do with a Wiggly Toddler Boy (other than get frustrated) and have included her Top Ten ideas here. Please go look at the other 15.
1. Put him in an empty bath tub, give him water colors and let him go.
2. Put rice in a cake pan and let him pour from cup to cup.
3. Put him outside everyday regardless of weather.
4. Give him a small spray bottle of water and a rag. Set him loose on the fridge front, bathroom tile, linoleum, etc.
5. Make homemade play dough; give him a rolling pin.
6. When reading aloud, ask him many questions. Get him pointing, naming, giggling over each picture.
7. Have him run and tag the front door, run back and give you a high five, and repeat. And repeat. And repeat.
8. Find an empty box we can fit in; stay in the room with him to ensure safety- but get that book you’ve wanted to read for a while, because he’ll be busy for a while.
9. Teach him how to build a fort with the cushions.
10. Let him spread the PB and J.
The EPA is Finally Getting Smart
The article then quoted John Pavitt, the EPA air compliance inspector for Anchorage, as saying, “You’re just not finding a lot of dirty cars any more.”
The EPA has finally realized that automakers have done their own successful science — for decades….
None of this discussion changes the fact that many individuals do not ensure that their engines remain as clean as they were the day the car was delivered to its first owner. They fail to do their job by not properly caring for their automobiles. Over the years I have looked at many emissions tests on vehicles with well over 100,000 miles, still blowing 2 hydrocarbons like they were brand new. The service records for those vehicles showed that they were flawlessly maintained. Likewise the reverse was true: On similar cars failing emission tests, further research showed that little if any required maintenance had been done. I have testified to that fact in Austin. No one cared.
But let it be known from this day forward that the world’s automotive engineers have designed and built unbelievably clean vehicles. And that power plants, not cars, create 72 percent of the so-called greenhouse gas emissions. And that the EPA has admitted knowing that modern cars are rarely found seriously polluting.
Let it also be broadcast that ethanol is not a cleaner-burning fuel, nor has it gotten rid of Middle Eastern oil. Four-dollar-a-gallon gas has done more to inhibit our importation of oil from that region than anything else.
It would be nice to enter a new Golden Age of Science, where intelligent and cost-effective ideas were enabled to make this a cleaner planet. Instead, we have government mandates that claim to do something to improve the environment – but all they really do is make it look like we’re doing something to make things better.
On the other hand, shouldn’t we all praise the world’s automakers for their contributions to cleaner air, even though that parade is already 17 years late? Nah. The EPA’s already claimed the credit for what car companies actually invented.
Lit Mag Submissions Part 2
Yesterday I submitted a story which I’ve told here on the blog. Several friends and family members have encouraged me to submit it before so I cleaned it up a bit and in it went. I don’t know if any of my submissions will be selected for publication but here’s hoping they all do.
Family Camping, or How I Didn’t Get Murdered in 1975
I grew up in a camping family and I raised a camping family. We don’t camp as much as we did when our kids were young because we bought a lake house about 15 years ago. We do camp from time to time and our kids camp. They camp with one another, with cousins and friends and with our equipment so our stuff is still being used. I was recently asked by someone to recount a favorite camping story. I can’t decide if time has dulled the memory of our vacation in 1975 or perhaps maturity has made me appreciate it more.
Camping Story: Destination: Glacier National Park 1975
We take a 10 day old Caprice Classic Estate Station Wagon (anyone remember the old wood grain days?) on a road trip to Glacier National Park, a trip my dad has been planning for several years. The station wagon runs out of gas 20 miles from Valentine, Nebraska while Mama is driving and Daddy is snoozing in the back seat. He’d told her to get gas at the next town; we didn’t make it there. He starts walking. A nice couple sees him and picks him up as they tell him they make this drive every Sunday and many Sundays they never see another vehicle. They also explain that he is 24 miles away from a town, any town. The couple takes him to town, he gets gas and a wheat harvest convoy headed south brings him back to the car. The trip to and from Valentine, Nebraska is a mere 4 hour delay, not too bad all in all and, although later than he’d planned, we still manage to get to where he had planned to spend the night.
We visit the Badlands National Park, town of Deadwood, and Mt Rushmore National Memorial, all in South Dakota, before heading to Montana and Custer’s Battle Field and, then, on to Glacier.
There is no Weather Channel or World Wide Web in 1975. We arrive at Glacier to discover they have had a very late spring and snow thaw. Consequently, the campground Daddy wants is closed, the hiking trails are all closed and the snow is so deep there is no way to tell what is a glacier or what is a snowfield. The only road through the park, Going-to-the-Sun Road, is closed due to an avalanche which the National Park Service is working to clear. Avalanches closing the road happen 2 more times during our stay in Glacier. We have to drive the park’s perimeter (104 miles one way) to see the other side of the park. Each time we leave the park we have to re-enter it. Each re-entry costs my saved-three-years-for-this-trip dad and is an expense he had not budgeted for.
Picture, if you will 3 teenagers who are, by this time, very disgruntled and would rather be in Yellowstone and a dad who is probably even more disgruntled than they but also very disappointed because his years of planning have fallen apart.
It is the middle of the night, Daddy wakes to hear a noise. Finally he decides that it is a grizzly bear and rolls over to go back to sleep. My mom is awakened about this time by her poodle. You know the one with the small bladder. Mama gets up, takes Amber outside, comes back inside and gets back in bed. She then hears the noises outside and wakes my dad who tells her it is no big deal, it is just a griz. She promptly has a screaming fit since she’s just been outside with the bear. Her screams traumatize the bear and it runs away.
The next morning we get up to discover that for the first, and only, time in his life my dad has forgotten to put the ice chest in the car at night. Mr. Griz had gotten into, and eaten some of each, but not all of any of our steaks, chickens and several different packages of hamburger. Daddy is neither proud nor pleased at yet another unexpected expense, more meat to be purchased.
The good news, however, is that Going-to-the-Sun Road Road is open. We hop in the station wagon and take off. It is a lovely, scenic road and we take many pictures. After several hours we get to the other side of the park, have a picnic lunch and turn around to go back only to discover that the road has been closed again due to another avalanche and we must make the drive around the outside AGAIN. We decide to head north to visit Waterton National Park which is in Canada and connected to Glacier National Park creating the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. My dad is excited at the thought of Canada, my brothers and I are delighted to finally get to be doing something besides sitting in the car and my mom, well, Mama is just happy that Daddy is happy.
About an hour into our new adventure we run into a problem. We can’t get to the Canadian border because that road is closed, or more accurately, gone. The bridge and road have been washed away by the late spring thaw. Our trip to the Canadian part of Glacier is canceled and once again my dad turns the car around to head back to Glacier’s East Entrance. Going-to-the-Sun Road was still closed so back around the park to the West Entrance we head.
Within minutes of hearing that we will once again be making the 104 mile trek to the West Entrance to get to our campground a chant from the 2 back seats of the station wagon begins. It starts softly with one of my brothers, gets a bit louder when my other brother joins in and crescendos into a roar when I take up the chant: We want to go to Yellowstone. We Want To Go To Yellowstone. WE WANT TO GO TO YELLOWSTONE. WE WANT TO GO TO YELLOWSTONE.
My mother tries to shush the thunderous roar to no avail. My dad, by now a broken man, turns to the 4th teenager in the car. The teenager who is NOT his child but, who is, his favorite niece, the teenager who was not with us 3 years earlier when The Boys and I had begun our love affair with Yellowstone, the teenager who has not said a negative word during any of the disappointing trip. Daddy asks if she would like to see Yellowstone. She, after a kick in the shin from her seat partner (that would be me), admits her desire to see the World’s First National Park. He nods and drives silently back around the park to our campsite. It is late afternoon at this point so we have a meal of sandwiches and an early bedtime. Early the next morning we help Daddy pack up the pop-up camper, gather all our belongings and put the camper on the station wagon’s trailer hitch. The Boys and I, along with my cousin happily jump into those 2 back seats and to Yellowstone we go where we spend the bulk of the rest of our vacation. We also make it to Utah, Dinosaur National Monument and we visit friends in Colorado.
Looking back on it, I can’t believe Daddy didn’t kill David, Danny and I right there in the station wagon as we sat in the middle of Highway 89. It would have been Justifiable Homicide; no jury of his peers, other parents, would have ever convicted him.
It was our last family vacation until David and I started traveling together with our spouses and our kids. Two of those multi-family trips have been to Yellowstone including one in 1998 when Danny’s widow and their kids went with us. None of our trips have been to Glacier. It’s been over 35 years; I guess we ought to give Glacier a second chance.
