Geneology: I have been scanning old family pictures, and it has gotten me into a bit about my family history. Both my grandmothers' families seem well documented, but the grandfathers not so good. James A. Bryden goes back to Bolton, England, but really Scotland, I even have his birth certificate, but who were his brothers and sisters and grandparents? Not so sure. George Washington Haldaman was from Missouri, Oklahoma, and the like, but not much past there. My family album is here.

Here is Margret F. Haldaman, born in 1866. Her mother died young and she worked her way through school, attending college at Illinois Normal. She taught at the Indian Schools, she considered herself a missionary and never married:

ROMPEX, The Rocky Mountain Stamp Show is Denver's big yearly stamp show. It was held May 18-20 at Holiday Inn at DIA.

I went on Saturday and didn't buy a thing. It saddens me, I would really like to get back into stamps, but everything seemed too expensive, too organized. I began selling off my stamps simply because I needed the money. I still have a bunch of stamps, and I will start big collecting again, but for now my spare time is spent in working overtime. If I could spend time selling stamps, that would be much more pleasurable, and maybe I could then add to my own collection as well.

Maybe after the death of Everett Maddock has passed further into history I will be able to get back into stamps on my own. I am building a page of old pictures of Everett.

Everett R. Maddock

Everett R. Maddock was my best friend. Everett died May 4 from Cancer effecting his esophagus. He had not smoked in many years. He was 1 month younger than me.

We collected stamps together. Stamp collecting has become an old man's pastime, and Everett always liked to encourage young people to collect. He encouraged everyone he knew to collect, he felt that sharing his hobby would enrich our lives. He was right. We had very different collecting interests, but in the end we collected the same things: just about everything.

When I first knew Everett, he was a Dispatcher at Yellow Cab. He knew every nook and cranny in Denver, he encouraged me to do the same, and since we first met in 1988 I have lived and experienced Denver from its lowest to its highest. He went on to work with computers, and I consulted him whenever I had problems. He had worked earlier in the Medical field, and I consulted him whenever I had health problems.

Everett was a mountain. He was very tall, very large, he was more ethical than anyone else I have ever known. I will always miss him.

Who is Simon Bolivar?

I was talking to a fellow the other day who said he was Simon Bolivar. Okay, maybe he wasn't, but I was shocked at how many people had never heard of him, or just vaguely had heard his name. This guy was the biggest National Hero in Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, much of South America. Bolivia was named after him. He was the South American George Washington. And how about Joachin Murieta in Mexico? These guys should be known to everybody if we really have a global society. Maybe we are still more isolated than we ever realized.

HANDICAPPED PARKING IRRITATES SOME PEOPLE.

I don't like parking in the handicapped spaces because it makes me feel... well... handicapped. I have a charcot foot, which is the result of Diabetic Neuropathy. I have been very lucky that it has healed very well, but that is because I baby the foot. I do not wear a special boot, but I have to wear expensive shoes that accomodate my deformed right foot. The charcot foot came about because I broke my foot, and because I had no feeling in the foot, I broke it over and over again. Blood rushes to the foot, it heals very rapidly, but it breaks again. You walk on a tiny rock, your foot twists, and because you don't compensate for the twisting like normal people do, your foot will break again. X-Rays showed that the bones in the middle part of the foot where chipped, shattered and collapsed. By then, yes, I did have pain, but not nearly as much pain as the "phantom" shooting pains that I'd had when the neuropathy began years before. The arch of the foot is gone, it looks like I have two left feet.

At the same time, I need to walk on my feet fairly often to keep the blood circulating. I can walk a couple hundred feet, and in fact walking is easier than standing on the bad foot. Climbing stairs or even a step is fairly difficult. The main potential for trouble other than breaking the foot again is that I can develop ulcers on the foot if too much pressure is put on it in any one place. I drive with my left foot, I can no longer drive with a clutch.

And so, I try to park in a normal parking space, as long as it isn't too far from the door. Of course, bad weather, when I can't see what I'm walking on, means I need a handicapped space. If you see me walking from my car and you cannot tell that I am handicapped, then thank you! That is what I have tried to achieve. It just looks like a slight limp, and the foot goes off at a slight angle. But, yes, I really do appreciate a handicapped space at times.

Spring!

Sitting around the Rock Pile at work, the smokers believe we are being discriminated against.

The Rock Pile is what we called the smoking place in High School. It was at the end of the North Wing at Thomas Jefferson High School, by the Industrial Arts classes. In my Senior Year, we had Senior Hall where you could smoke inside. In college, we would make an ash tray out of the silver lining of the cigarette pack, smoke in class. When I started working, most of the problems were solved over a cigarette. My father died at an early age, probably because of smoking (Camels).

Habits are hard to break. I have tried to quit many times, I was fairly successful several times. Most recently I started again because I missed that socializing, but also because I rebelled at the anti-smoking campaigns. It makes me want to wear neither my seat-belt nor my motorcycle helmet. It seems that we are rejecting our history. Smoking in bars, and especially in Casinos, seems like it should be the last bastion of the evil curse of smoking. Let us die with dignity! Let smoking die with dignity!

Rocky Mountain News Rocky Talk Live recently had a contributor who said, "I have said many times that the 80 percent of us who don't smoke will triumph over the 20 percent of you who do. That's the way it works in a democracy. If you don't like it, you know where the door is." Wow, isn't that the same argument they used for Segregation not too long ago? Why do we need to control the lives of others?