The Westmoore Color Guard at Putnam City Marching Classic

Saturday, Rachel and her Westmoore Color Guard and the Westmoore Marching Band competed at the Putnam City Marching Classic. A sunny, hot day, we'd intended to watch the preliminary performance at around 3:00 and maybe catch a few other schools but we got there an hour or so early and found the boosters could use a spare hand or two to get the things done that needed to be done so we pitched in.

(Emily declined our invitation and stayed at home. Guess she's had enough of sitting the stands for a while.)

In this heat - it was near 90 - making sure the band and Color Guard had plenty of water was the highest priority. We set out to find the Color Guard and found them rehearsing just east of the baseball field in their bright turquoise jumpsuit thingies. (Rachel's about eighth from the left.)

Well-hydrated, we left them to claim our seats in the stands. They took the field at around 3:00, and we were facing the south so we had full sun in our faces and little breeze. Still, it couldn't have been as bad as on the field:

(A side note: I'd had roughly this same view nearly 30 years ago as a student when I attended the Putnam City West footballs games. I never imagined I'd come back to see my daughter on the very same field.)

Yeah, I know, they're minuscule, zoom in ya' doofus - I'm shooting video with one hand and still pictures with the other and I can't steady myself enough to zoom in. I cropped the picture enough to focus the attention on what's on the field - who needs sky and the backs of spectators heads?

Doesn't do 'em justice without the music and movement but they were impressive. Impressive enough that for the preliminaries, they won best visuals and best-something-else-that-was-impressive. Though three other schools place first, second, and third. Ominous.

We helped out afterwards, passing around more water, and then doling out food - a catered affair by The Olive Garden.

They re-grouped, got some pep talks, and made plans for the evening competition. We couldn't stay but Clara got a call later from a very excited Rachel: They'd won first place!

Good deal. I'm amazed at these kids and all the hard work they put in. A well-deserved victory.

UPDATE: You can read the just-the-facts-ma'am version at NewsOK.com here and you can read Ray Sears' more detailed version here, with pictures provided by Ray.

Keeping it Simple

Related to my post about keeping your investment strategy simple, here's a book review of The Gone Fishin' Portfolio by Alexander Green:

Mr. Green's formula is really an extension of the "non-correlation" approach that David Swenson uses to manage the Yale Endowment Fund and that other followers of modern portfolio theory have developed to achieve substantial returns with less volatility -- putting money into markets that may move in different (non-correlated) directions. The essential trick is to invest beyond U.S. borders and to invest in alternatives to common stocks, like commodities that zig when the stock market zags (gold is an example).

Mr. Green is a big fan of no-load mutual funds like Vanguard's, with their low-cost, tax-minimizing structure. He recommends buying 10 of them. The majority of such funds are heavily invested in the stock markets of the U.S., Europe, Asia and emerging-market countries; but the funds also take smaller positions in bonds (Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities, high-quality and high-yield corporates) and hard assets (gold and real-estate investment trusts). Investing in such a variety of unrelated assets, Mr. Green argues, provides built-in stabilizers to protect your portfolio on the downside when Wall Street stumbles.

Good advice. Keep your investment strategy simple and it'll pay off. Best of all, you'll sleep at night.

John Wayne, The Man Inside The Myth

This looks interesting. A film series and exhibit at USC examining John Wayne as "Actor, Star, Icon, Trojan":

The retrospective, which kicks off tonight and continues through Sunday at USC's Norris Cinema Theatre/Frank Sinatra Hall, celebrates the famed USC alum through a series of classic films and discussions. The event also heralds the opening Sunday of a three-month exhibit of Wayne's life and career in the David L. Wolper Center, in the lower level of USC's Doheny Memorial Library, which features artifacts and memorabilia culled from Batjac Productions -- Wayne's production company -- the USC Film Archives and private collectors.

I didn't know he was a USC Trojan.

Lileks and Google Maps

Lileks uses Google Maps like I wanted to do here and here. He seems to be able to edit the picture while still maintaining the utility of the Google Maps tools.

I don't know how he did it but you can get a sense of what I was trying to do. Something to keep in mine should I continue with Google Maps related posts.

McCain Suspends Campaign to Help With Bailout

I'm not sure this is a smart move for McCain:

John McCain will suspend his presidential campaign Thursday and has asked to postpone his debate Friday with Barack Obama so the two senators can return to Washington to help negotiate a Wall Street bailout, an approach that Obama promptly rejected.

I think it'll be seen more as a gimmick for McCain than a leadership move. But now that he's on this track, he should go to Washington, do what he has to do, then fly back to Mississippi and do the debate. If McCain does poorly, he can blame his work on the financial crisis and Obama's lack of participation. If McCain does well, then he further proves he's the superior candidate.

Tags

I noticed in my tags that Rachel is falling behind in posts that reference her. Well, this may be a cheap attempt to close the tag gap but there's a good reason why she hasn't figured more prominently in what I've posted so far: At 16, and involved with Color Guard and a life outside of much of what we do, it's sad but inevitable. We're lucky to get a glimpse of her for a few minutes each day.

Although tonight's a little different. She's in the family room right now talking with Clara about teenage stuff. Better grab the time while we can.

Keep It Simple

Karl Okamoto offers not only investing tips in these troublesome times but tips for the solution to the ongoing financial mess: 

So let me offer one more anti-intellectual suggestion. As we ponder the regulatory solutions to the current mess, my suggestion is we keep it simple. The reason why financial institutions blow up is the same reason houses go into foreclosure. People take risks they cannot fully insure. Normally people are pretty good about avoiding such extreme positions because they understand the downside and wisely avoid it. So if I am going to lose my 20% down payment on this condo if I can’t support next year’s mortgage payments, I’ll buy a cheaper one where I am certain I can “keep my seat” in a down-turn. By appealing to human’s natural optimism and avarice while at the same time masking or often eliminating the downside cost, the home lending market created a “heads I win, tails who cares” environment for home buyers that eliminated the “old fashioned” calculus that defined prudent home buying and finance.

.

This Is Not Your Grandmother's Bible Study

From Mike Potemra at The Corner on National Review Online:

These are the words Raymond Arroyo uses to describe a surprisingly
captivating new book he has edited called Mother Angelica's Private and Pithy Lessons from the Scriptures. I say "surprisingly," because a book with that title would not seem to be designed for people like me: 1) I'm a Protestant and 2) though I watch and enjoy much of the programming on the Catholic TV network (EWTN) Mother Angelica founded, I always found the public persona of the lady herself distinctly off-putting. And so along comes this book, and it's full of meditations on Scripture that are genuinely humble and moving.

Arroyo writes, accurately, that what Mother Angelica has developed in these pages is "a theology of the street—an approach to Scripture that was immediately relatable to daily living."Almost all of the book remains in the territory of what C.S. Lewis called "mere Christianity"; in only a handful of instances does the author dwell on R.C. distinctives.

On one of these, actually, I must register a polite protest: In discussing John 6, a crucial text on the Eucharist, she writes: "Even the Fundamentalists, who take the Scripture at face value, say, 'This is ridiculous.' They take this whole chapter and throw it out the window. They never mention it."

Ahem: If you go to the fundamentalist website sermonAudio.com, and click on John 6, you will be able to listen to on-demand audio of—at last count—nine hundred and nineteen different sermons on this one chapter. And that's just one fundamentalist website. What she meant to say is, fundamentalists mention it all the time, but disagree with her Church's interpretation of it.

Much more in line with the book's overall spirit is the following passage, discussing Luke 17:7-10: "When you're talking about accomplishing a duty for God, He is not obliged to say thank you or reward you. We can't go to heaven with any concept of an award or reward for all the exterior things we did. Those were inspirations we merely followed . . . The only thing I will have when I die is the amount of love I have for God at that moment."

Now, even today I run across Protestant apologists who claim that Catholics believe in "justification by works," as opposed to "justification by faith"; the next time I meet one of these apologists I must remember to quote that passage, and then tell him it was written by a conservative, doctrinally orthodox Catholic nun. And an even more typical passage is the one about King David: "The thing to remember about David is he was really a sinner and yet Our Lord loved him so much that he's known as the Son of David. David did some pretty bad things: He shed a lot of blood . . . he had that thing going with Bathsheba and then he murdered her husband. David should be an encouragement to any of you who might get discouraged over your little peccadilloes. Once the Lord loves you, I tell you. it's unbelievable. His love is forever.""He had that thing going with Bathsheba" captures the book's style; "His love is forever" captures its spirit.

Sorry to steal the entire post but, well, this is the blogosphere and, besides, it was hard to decide which of it to leave out.

I paid a visit to sermonaudio.com and Potemra's right: you can download a kajillion sermons on just about any part of the Bible you'd like. Might be worth checking out.

Blogging Stats

According to SiteMeter, as of this writing, this site has received 75 hits. The most popular post? This one. Most of my visitors to that post seem to be coming from Europe or at least outside of the United States so that might explain why the search terms of "Emily Winehouse" brings those fine people here: they're typing in the wrong search terms.

Look, I'm glad to get the visitors, but it's "Amy Winehouse" not "Emily Winehouse." Try your search again and I'm sure you'll find what you're looking for.

(Oh, great. Now I'll get even more hits on "Emily Winehouse" since I've used the term three times for this post. Sorry to disappoint my visitors yet again.)

The Fair

We went to the Oklahoma State Fair this year with Emily and our neighbor's daughter, Carli. (Rachel had a football game to attend.) We knocked off work an hour early so we could get out there and still have some time to see and do most of the things we wanted to do. Emily and Carli were very excited, full of big plans to ride the big rides. Clara and me, heck, we were just looking for a good corn dog. Heard the Fair's the place to get 'em.

Off we went:

The Midway's just full of choices. And people. Every kind of people. More amusement to be had by just people watching than the rides themselves.

The Himalaya can still provide the thrills:

The turkey legs are just as big. If you don't lose it, you can work up an appetite riding the rides.

You'll get thirsty, too:

Still, there's time to contemplate your place in the universe. And plan your next move:

While we were taking a small break, there was some commotion not far away. Shouts. People hurrying along. Gathering into a crowd. Hard to tell what was going on so I raised my cell phone above the crowd to get a picture:

Dang. Let's try again:

Two horses down. Clydesdales. It looked like they were pulling a wagon and got somehow tangled up with one another and one pulled the other down. By now, the drivers had disengaged them from the wagon and pulled that back and had removed the harnesses and collars and were working on getting the horses back up on their feet. Which they eventually did, to the applause of the crowd. The horses didn't seem any worse for the wear so we moved on.

We forced the kids into some of the exhibits: the new cars, the animals. They could only take so much so we cut them loose on their own. We kept in touch by cell phone and later caught up to them.

But they had more plans. Big plans. Some us were skeptical:

But the lights of the Midway beckoned.

So, at last, the evening was capped off with some keen competition: Emily vs. the balloons. With darts.


She won a small prize and we were done for the night and for this year's edition of the Fair.

Always a great time.

Oh, did we find a good corn dog? We did! Though not as good as we remembered. Still, it was a Fair corn dog and you just can't get that anywhere else. And not with such good company.