Friday, February 18, 2005

Class of 1964 Received a note from Dulany Sriner, SHS Class of 1964. He writes: I was just looking over the SHS web site and ran across your Class of 1958 site. I just wanted to congratulate you on a job well done. I DO know how much work it is. I started a similar site after our 40th reunion last fall. I will place a link on our site to yours. Keep up the good work. Dulany Sriner  I checked out the site and its many 40th reunion pictures. Some family names are familiar, probably the younger siblings of our classmates. You may be glad to know that a few faces look just as old as we '58s!! 11:14:23 PM    comment []

Pop or Soda? What do you call a soft drink? Pop? Coke? Soda? Turns out to reflect your home or birth place, which ever is more influential. A geographer at the University of Oklahoma has constructed a map showing the distribution of soft-drink names by counties of 120, 464 responses across the USA. Pretty ingenious work, although you'll have to overlook the fact that he misspells "Respondents." Other names: Champ Davis once told me that his grandmother, from southern Illinois, referred to Coke as "dope" and in New England, I learned to call a sweet carbonated beverage "tonic." Have you learned any other names for soft drinks? 10:49:57 PM    comment []

Nick Graebel Nick writes, "Hi, I have made the news here in town, though not in the best way possible," with a link to a story in The Capital Times of Madison, WI. The story reads, in part: A fire lieutenant and a resident of an east Madison condominium were injured in a suddenly explosive blaze Friday afternoon. It took firefighters just 25 minutes to put out the fire at 1313 Tompkins Drive, across the street from Glendale Elementary School. But while crews were in the basement it flashed over, igniting the basement from floor to ceiling, said Assistant Fire Chief Carl Saxe. A flashover occurs when a room's temperature reaches the combustion temperature of its contents. Some crew members ran through flames to escape and others found another exit, Saxe said. Lt. Richard Graebel, a 40-year department veteran, was treated at University Hospital for non-life-threatening burns and smoke inhalation suffered in that escape. He was released Friday night, the department reported. Saxe said flashovers are one of the deadliest dilemmas that firefighters face. "As our protective equipment becomes more and more thermal insulating, it also becomes easier to get too far into a very hot structure fire, thus putting the firefighter at risk of being caught in a flashover," he said. The good news is that Nick is recovering at home and will soon be back to work. I have sent him best wishes and hope to see him appear at our next Reunion, with his bushy eyebrows intact. 2:17:21 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 William Howarth. Last update: 3/8/05; 8:20:19 PM.