I will, like, always thank my, like, father for, like, tormenting me so that I, like, don't USE this, like, word as space filler.

In fact, he tormented me ANY time a word became space filler.

I love my dad.

Too many adults never lose this habit.

Our dear friend, higher educated at Stanford University... (if you're reading this, we love ya,G!)

One of my classmates, a doctoral student...

It's not a discriminatory habit. However, it's one we intend to free our children from, just as my dad did to us. Phoebe already catches herself when she does it - though we drove her to tears last weekend because of it. Bad Mom or Good Mom moment? Only time will tell.

From my grandmother today in response to the exchange about the B17 bombers:

About WW2 air warfare--My husband, Clark. Burton was a 2nd Lt.


t. in Feild Artillery--He rec'd his commision from Purdue U. R.O. TC..In
1938.when called to active duty in '41,he, e was sent to Va. Then Camp
Edwards, Cape Cod., Mass. to be trained in
Anti Aircraft...Then to England, then N. Africa, chasing Rommel thru the
Desert
Eventually his Unit and others invaded Southern Italy---They shot
down many German planes..Our Aircraft was stationed nearby--when they
returned from a sortie (?) our planes unloaded their remaining
ammunition in the vicinity of our Anti Aircraft unit, until Clark and
his boys, returned fire!. When they,and others had decimated the German
Aircraft, the Anti Aircraft personnel were trained to be infantymen.
From there the proceeded North until they were no. of Rome My Husband
was sent home two years after he left, theank God, still in one peice,
but battle weary. Piney Burton, Amanda Aaronson's Grandmother

I'm loving this impromptu history lesson!!!

Phil sent out an e-mail about seeing the B17 to our family e-mail list, and we just received the following from my father-in-law:

Bob Collins sure has made a hobby into a big business.

He is a former DEC employee who left & made his fortune starting Data Terminals the first automated supermarket terminal. He sold out before it went bust & on his large estate in Sudbury MA built a replica of an English WWII airbase. His collection went beyond airplanes as it also had a collection of old time Indy racing cars.

I was involved with them thru Jim Plunkett whose wife Lucy was in my group at DEC. Jim flew a PBY Catalina (a slow 2-engine patrol plane that was used for anti-submarine warfare, but mainly to rescue downed flyers in the water) in WWII. Wonderful guy. He invited me to join Collin's group (all it took was $ & a will to work). I was working on their B-24 scraping paint off the plane. The B-24 was purchased from the India Air Force...no joke!

I left because there were just a few of us doing grunt work & when he did his first show in NH I never saw so many guys riding around in jeeps giving orders, but mainly because Jim always wanted to go up in the B-17. He had a brain tumor & they bumped him from a ride to give his seat to some congressman.He never had his ride.

Jim liked Philip & when he heard that Philip was going into aerospace engineering he gave him his Navy gold wings which I now have.

There is an annual airshow here in RI & every now & then in the days before the show you will see the old planes from the beach flying by. Thrilling, but terrifying to think what they could do in mass. Would not want to gas up one of them.

Hope I did not bore you, but it brought up some memories of the past. It begs the question of why people who have never been in the military or seen the results of war so fascinated with the tools of war?

Bore us? I asked him to send along more memories like this when he has them!