• U. S. Newspaper Circulation Drops Again Another 5% Lost
• Dems Lead Early Vote Turnouts, but Experts Cautious on Meaning
• Fiorina Closed Cash and Poll Gaps On Boxer
• Will GOP Get Gerrymandering Power Next Tuesday?
• Russian Going Private As Obama Drags USA Left
• Iran’s Bags of Cash Normal For Karzai
• More Proof of Obama’s Failed Foreign Policy
• Democrat Evidence Next Tuesday Won’t Be So Bad
• Death Panel Preview
• Clinton and Gates Beg NATO For Missile Shield Obama Scraped.
• 50^th Anniversary of Worst Space Tragedy
• Memories of McMechen, West Virginia

 

For Lieutenant Governor, Democrat Gavin Newsom maintains an advantage over Republican Abel Maldonado, 42% to 34%. The contest is effectively even among voters who have returned a ballot says Survey USA.

Only two major newspapers posted circulation gains for the six months ending September 30, 2010 the Wall Street Journal and Dallas Morning News. New York’s Newsday, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Houston Chronicle all registered double-digit declines in circulation.

The latest ABC figures come as US newspapers grapple with declining print advertising revenue, eroding circulation and the migration of readers to the Web.

An example is The Los Angeles Times that reported its weekday circulation fell to 907,997 as of March 31, down from 970,802 a year ago. Sunday circulation fell to 1,253,849 from 1,361,442 a year earlier. The million a day circulation number was once the benchmark to be called “major.”

According to a new L.A. Times poll in the gubernatorial race here in California, Jerry Brown now leads Meg Whitman 52 percent to 39 percent. She spent $163 million of her own money and she’s behind by 13 points. That’s the biggest expenditure of money for a loss since the Yankees — Leno

Tallies from the nine states that report voters’ party affiliations during early voting show Democratic turnout running ahead of Republicans in six states. However, analysts say these numbers can be deceptive - some differences are as little as a tenth of a percent. They might even hide efforts of leftist successors to the discredited and defunct ACORN organization, as well as others on the liberal side, to pad the Democratic vote.

Although 31 states allow early balloting, only nine permit revealing party registrations as the voting proceeds. While the Democrats lead in six, Republicans are turning out in larger numbers in Florida, Nevada, and Colorado.

In Florida, Republicans, possibly motivated by Marco Rubio’s U.S. Senate candidacy against independent Gov. Charlie Crist and Democratic Rep. Kendrick Meek, lead early returns with 52.8 percent of the vote. Democrats have 33.7 percent of the vote, and independents, 13.5 percent.

“That’s interesting because usually the Democrats have won the in-person, and the Republicans have won the mail balloting,” says George Mason University political science professor Michael McDonald, who runs a project tracking early voting returns around the country. “The Republicans are winning it by a large margin, and that’s a little bit unusual due to the fact the Senate race has really two Republican candidates and one Democratic candidate.”

Colorado Republicans lead early balloting with 41.8 percent of the vote, compared with 36.5 percent for the Democrats, and 21 percent among independents.

In Nevada, Republicans have a slight advantage with 42.5 percent of the vote compared with 42.4 percent for the Democrats, and 15.1 percent among independents. This reflects the tight race between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and GOP challenger Sharron Angle, McDonald says.

In Boulder City, Nev., voters are rightfully steamed after they discovered that the touch-screen machine already had come up snake eyes.

Instead of a check at Angle’s name, the machine checked Angle’s opponent, Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid, according to a report on Channel 5 Fox News in Las Vegas. Officials blamed fumble fingered voters but voters say the fix was in.

Less than a percentage point separates Democrats and Republicans in Maine, where Democrats have 37.1 percent of the vote compared with 37 percent for the Republicans, 24.3 percent among independents, and 1.7 percent for the Greens.

Democrats lead in Iowa with 45.5 percent of the vote, compared with 38.1 percent for the Republicans, and 16.4 percent of the vote among independents.

In Louisiana, Democrats lead with 46 percent, compared with 43.6 for Republicans and 10.4 percent for those listed as other.

Maryland’s Democrats hold a commanding lead in the state’s early voting with 63.8 percent of the vote, compared with 27.4 percent for the Republicans and 8.8 percent among those listed as other.

Democrats likewise lead in North Carolina, where they have 44.5 percent of the vote among early voters, compared with 38 percent for Democrats and 17.4 percent among independents.

In West Virginia, Democrats lead with 55 percent of the vote, compared with 35.3 percent and 9.6 percent among those listed as other when state election officials stopped reporting the affiliations of its early voters on Oct. 21.

“The early voting numbers are generally confirming the polling numbers we are seeing,” McDonald says.

The West Virginia numbers could be an exception because many of the state’s Democrats are conservatives who might vote Republican, McDonald tells Newsmax.

The Democratic National Committee has touted the early voting trend in the Democrats’ favor, saying it is an important part of its midterm strategy.

But some political observers voice skepticism about how such results play out in the final count.

President Obama was briefed Tuesday morning on an engineering power failure at F.E. W*arren Air Force Base in Wyoming that took 50 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), one-ninth of the U.S. missile stockpile, temporarily offline last  Saturday. His official response - a blank. Officials say there was no espionage.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, said it was sponsoring a $3 million TV ad campaign in support of Fiorina in her California Senate campaign’s final week.

The money would pay for an attack ad characterizing Senator Boxer (D) as “self serving” and “ineffective” ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections, the group said.

Democrat-leaning California is one of 10 states the Republicans must pick up to win control of the Senate. The Republicans are seen very likely to win control of the House of Representatives.

Earlier this month, Fiorina, the former chief executive officer of computer giant Hewlett-Packard, bolstered her own campaign treasury with loans of $1.25 million in personal funds.

Data show that as of the end of September, Fiorina’s campaign had $1.8 million cash on hand and an outstanding debt of $543,000, compared to $6.5 million cash on hand and no debt reported by Boxer’s campaign. A Boxer blitz is expected Halloween weekend.

Fiorina was admitted to a hospital on Tuesday for treatment of an infection related to reconstructive surgery this summer after breast cancer. She was released Wednesday and plans to return to the campaign trail in California Thursday.

Wednesday’s Survey USA poll show incumbent Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer leading GOP challenger Carly Fiorina by five percentage points. The general polling trend appears to be swinging in Boxer’s favor, with the respected Field Poll due today. It is unclear whether Carly’s health situation will impact opinions or not.

Billionaire currency manipulator and teenaged Nazi collaborator George (Schwartz) Soros has contributed $1 million to the California ballot measure that would legalize marijuana for recreational use.

An overlooked importance of this midterm election is at the state levels where redistricting will happen next year after the results of the 2010 census are fully known. States have a wide variation of how they redraw jurisdictions but generally speaking the political party that controls that state has disproportionate juice drawing district lines influencing its legislature and congressional delegations and other offices for a decade.

Right now it looks like Republicans are set to gain significantly next year likely getting majority control of a dozen to 18 state legislatures (Democrats control 27 now and the GOP 14).

  For 40-years Democrats have had an almost 2 to 1 advantage and been able to freely gerrymander. Changing that would be a watershed.

Monday a Gallup poll put Obama’s approval rating at 41% an all time low and a drop of 7 points in one week. Among “independents” it is worse at just 36% and Republican approval is approaching ground level. In a Democrat write-in poll question people wrote in Obamacare as the most citing reason they disapprove.

Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev said last weekend “we can no longer approach the  problems of the aging Russian populace in the Soviet paternalistic way, placing the entire burden on the state”.

“Along with privatizing medical care, it is one of the strongest statements against the socialist approach I know,” says Colonel John Reeside USA (R)—rather the Russians know, having suffered through the “democratic” misery imposed by such a form of government. John is fluent in Russian and knowledgeable of its culture.

Russia’s population has been in decline since the 1990s and life expectancy has also dropped into the fifties for males and women into the low seventies more than ten years less than Americans. Russia continues to shrink and grey.

It’s a great irony as Russia and China move to privatization the U. S. blunders along to where they are fighting to escape their systems failure.

South Korean authorities are trying to untangle themselves from a slimy row: how many octopus heads is it safe to eat? Octopus heads are a favorite dish on the peninsula — for their supposed aphrodisiac qualities.

In September, the Seoul city government enraged restaurateurs and the fishing industry when it announced octopus heads contained hazardous amounts of cadmium, a carcinogen that poisons the liver and kidneys. It advised against eating more than two Octopus heads a day.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai admitted in a press conference Monday that his office accepts “bags of money” from the Iranian government.  Cynics gaffaw at U. S. indignation saying the U. S. has simply codified its corruption making it a legal pay-to-play industry while open corruption is an accepted way-of-life in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Nevertheless Karzai’s bald acknowledgment brings out into the open two uncomfortable facts confronting the US plan to build a modern democracy in Afghanistan. Just as in Iraq, Iran is successfully buying influence with Afghan leaders. And Mr. Karzai - like many members of Afghanistan’s political class - sees bags of cash as a perfectly legitimate tool of statecraft.

Iran’s efforts extends beyond Karzai’s palace. Members of Parliament say other politicians are taking Iranian money. And recent media reports claim that the Iranians are paying the Taliban to kill US soldiers offering a bounty.

What does Iran want for its bags of cash? First and foremost, Iran wants pressure put on international forces to leave its doorstep.

“The Iranians are happy with the Karzai regime being established in Afghanistan - in this way, the US and Iran are aligned. But when it comes to international forces in Afghanistan, the Iranians are quite unhappy about this,” says Waliullah Rahmani, head of the Kabul Center for Strategic Studies.

The US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan put American forces on the ground on either side of Iran. In Afghanistan, US forces at Shindand Airbase are less than 75 miles from the Iranian border.

Obama will appear on Discovery channel’s Mythbusters episode to air on December 8.  It reprises an earlier debunking of the 2,000-year-old story that Greek mathematician and engineer Archimedes set fire to an invading Roman fleet using a system of mirrors to focus the sun’s rays. If anyone should know about smoke and mirrors it’s Obama.

In further evidence of Obama’s confounded foreign policy failures Turkey did and now Saudi Arabia have agreed to expand security cooperation with China.

Officials said Beijing and Riyad have signed several agreements that would pave the way for Chinese security assistance to Saudi Arabia. They said the agreements would include intelligence exchanges as well as security training.

“The agreement is meant to focus on stopping terror,” an official said.

The accords were signed on Oct. 11 during a visit by Chinese Public Security Minister Ming Jian Hu to Riyad.

Ming met Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef Bin Abdul Aziz, regarded as the second most powerful official in the kingdom.

The official Saudi Press Agency said the accords stipulated security training, joint investigations and exchange of visits.

SPA said Beijing and Riyad also agreed to exchange intelligence and security expertise.

In Syria, a 5-year-old boy and a 3-year-old girl are engaged. It’s his second marriage and her first. This is crazy. He’s almost twice her age. Tickle Me Elmo is the best man. They’re very serious in Syria. Maybe that’s where the name comes from.-Jimmy Kimmel

The Atlas Project, a Democratic consulting firm that analyzed voter data says early indications are that Democratic turnout could be stronger than expected. It says early ballots in the 17 states where voting has been sufficient to draw historical comparisons show a partisan balance that looks very much like that in 2006, the year Democrats took back the House and the Senate.

In some states like Georgia, Florida, Michigan and North Carolina, African Americans in particular seem to be making up a greater proportion of early voters at this point than in 2006.

It is impossible to tell for whom early voters are casting their ballots, most states disclose who has voted. Both parties carefully monitor this information so they know where to target their efforts. The Atlas Project analyzed the early voters’ party affiliations, demographic profiles and other factors to assess each party’s turnout efforts.

“They’ve probably gotten their partisans to the polls. I would take small solace in that if I were them,” said Joe Gaylord, who was Newt Gingrich’s chief political strategist when Gingrich (Ga.) engineered the Republican takeover of the House in 1994.

“In 1994, there was a flip to the Republicans. In 2006, there was a flip to the Democrats,” said pollster David Winston, who advises House Republicans. “Both of these flips were driven by independents, and that’s likely to be the case here, if it occurs.”

“In 1994, there was a flip to the Republicans. In 2006, there was a flip to the Democrats,” said pollster David Winston, who advises House Republicans. “Both of these flips were driven by independents, and that’s likely to be the case here, if it occurs.”

In California, the Atlas Project’s analysis suggests that Democrats account for 42.9 percent of the more than 1 million ballots cast thus far, which means they are running slightly ahead of the 41.4 percent they got in 2006. By comparison, Republicans have cast an estimated 39.7 percent of the early California ballots, which is down slightly from the 40.9 percent they got four years ago. How Atlas got those numbers thast are not supposed to be tabulated is a mystery.

Mark DiCamillo, director the nonpartisan California Field Poll, noted that the state’s early voters are heavily concentrated in the liberal San Francisco Bay area. He said nearly three-quarters of the voters in Santa Clara County have requested mail-in ballots, compared with 21 percent in Los Angeles County.

In Nevada, where Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid is fighting to hold on to his seat, Democrats appear to have slightly strengthened their early-voting edge from four years ago. The same is true in Michigan, where the proportion of early voters who are African American has increased from 8.2 percent in 2006 to 11 percent so far in 2010, according to Atlas Project figures.

In some states, including Florida and Iowa, Democrats continue to vote early in greater numbers than Republicans, but that advantage is slightly less than it was in 2006.

The firm reported that one state where Republicans appear to be doing well is Arizona, the scene of a monumental battle over illegal immigration. The Democratic share of early ballots in that state has dropped by 6.5 percent, and the Republican share has grown by 2.3 percent.

Notwithstanding the optimism by Atlas next Tuesday is shaping up to be a very bad day for Democrats.  

Monday, in an unusually move, even the usually liberal leaning ABC News predicted a GOP landslide.

“Hitler and the Germans,” an exhibition in Berlin’s German Historical Museum which investigates the society that created Hitler has some nervous. Nevertheless it saw more than 10,000 visitors walk through its doors since opening last Friday.

An example of what is ahead at the hands of Obamacare is peeking around the corner - its named Avastin. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) wants to de-list the cancer drug Avastin because it is too expensive. Not  that it doesn’t work. It’s scary to think that some faceless bureaucrat can summarily dismiss a cancer drugs merely because of expense, but that is what happens when government starts counting the beans. It becomes an issue of cost instead of effectiveness.

There were other reasons that the FDA wants to dump  Avastin, but cost was one of them. One of those that sat in judgment of Avastin admitted that cost was a factor in the decision to delegitimize the treatment. Natalie Compagni Portis, a member of one of the panels that the FDA convened to investigate the drug, said, “We aren’t supposed to talk about cost, but that’s another issue.”

In some cases it costs as much as $88,000 annually for an Avastin breast cancer regimen, certainly not a cheap deal. But who is the government to decide that a lifesaving (or life extending or life changing) drug is too expensive for us to be allowed to use?

Imagine what this might mean for future experimental drug treatments? How many drug companies will continue pursuing new treatments when they begin to see the expense involved? How many promising drugs will be abandoned as companies become fearful that the costs of development will never be returned in sales because of government proscriptions?

Put in different terms remember when flat screen TVs first came out? They  cost over $20,000. As more people clamored for them companies began to experiment on production techniques and the technology and down came the price. Imagine what could have happened if some federal bureaucrat got involved. No flat screen TV. Trivial and imperfect  but it is an example.

The drug manufacturing industry is are companies first and foremost. They manufacture products for sale. They aren’t charities. And if these companies see no profit at all in the effort they will not bother pursuing it. That is simply a fact of life.

That fact of life, that quashing of the entrepreneurial spirit, the destruction of the profit motive, all at the hands of government, will also quash new drugs that might bring lifesaving cures in the future. Avastin is one example of the heavy hand of government putting us all at risk.

The street in front of my house is concrete. The other day the city, using stimulus money, top sealed it with asphalt. One of the workers and I were chatting and we both remarked it was a dumb thing to do because it would need to be scrapped off, hauled away, recycled and replaced. Another example of government at work.

By the way the city had to spend the money fast -  so it did. Of course there are elections and politicians love to point with pride at brightly colored trucks whizzing to and fro and pop off about jobs and the like.

Brickbats are flying at NPR from lawmakers, political figures, news outlets, and media personalities wanting to yank public funding from National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System for summarily firing veteran political analyst Juan Williams for comments he made about Muslims on Fox TV. NPR top hat learned my definition of political correctness being told to pick up a dog dropping by the clean end.

After Obama scrapped a previous version  to curry favor with Russia while betraying and offending the Polish  and Czechs US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are pleaded for a NATO financed anti-missile system. Of course the French have “reservations” about it.

Ministers gathered at NATO headquarters to discuss a new “strategic concept” that will shape the 28-nation alliance’s vision for the next decade to face new threats including missiles from “rogue” states ( read Iran) and cyber assaults.

Gates has put the price tag to link NATO members into a common anti-missile network at between 85 million and 100 million euros (120 million and 140 million dollars).

French Defense Minister Herve Morin expressed  ”reservations” about the plan, saying Paris wanted more details about how much the system would cost and how it would work. He hinted that France would not block the missile shield plan when NATO leaders meet in Lisbon.

France, a nuclear-armed power, was also at odds with Germany, which backs the missile shield plan but is also pushing for nuclear disarmament, diplomats said.

“We all agree that we need an anti-missile shield if we look at the threats of today and tomorrow,” German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg told reporters. “We are very close to an agreement.”

Clinton said the draft strategic concept recognises the need for NATO “to remain a nuclear alliance as long as nuclear weapons exist” and at the same time highlights polyanna Obama’s goal of a nuclear-free world.

Clinton also warned that plans to slash Britain’s military spending could damage the military alliance.

“NATO has been the most successful alliance for defensive purposes in the history of the world I guess, but it has to be maintained,” she said. “Each country has to be able to make its appropriate contributions.”

Although Afghanistan was not officially on the agenda, ministers discussed the nine-year-old campaign which involves 150,000 international troops.

The NATO-led force was willing to provide “practical assistance” to reconciliation efforts between the Afghan government and the Taliban but ruled out halting military operations against the insurgency.

NATO leaders are expected to endorse at a summit in Lisbon next month plans to begin the handover of security responsibility to Afghan forces by July 2011.

They will also sign off on the strategic concept, replacing a document written in 1999, two years before the September 11 attacks on the United States that sparked the war in Afghanistan..

The 11-page mission statement, drafted by Rasmussen, has not been made public but it is expected to touch on 21st century threats including cyber attacks, missiles from “rogue” states, terrorism and Somali piracy.

While Gates acknowledged fiscal pressures on defense budgets across the alliance, he warned against cuts that could weaken NATO and even leave it crippled. Obama’s own commission is said to be considering slashing the U. S. defense budget to try to pay for some of his social engineering experimentation.

“But as nations deal with their economic problems, we must guard against the hollowing out of alliance military capability by spending reductions that cut too far into muscle,” Gates said. Everyone listened politely but they are just waiting to see how much cash Obama antes which is all that matters.

A new NFL policy against using a helmet as a weapon was in clear evidence Sunday as defensive players could be seen pulling up rather than risk fines of $75,000, suspension or even termination. The late Dick Matesik Sr. who played without a helmet for the Canton Bulldogs and Chicago Bears, and had the broken nose and scars to prove it must be having a fit. Mr. Matesik told ribald stories of the NFL in the 1920s and 30s including leaving his cigar smoldering on the edge of the bench to go into the game. One player suffered a concussion in Sunday’s games.

Russia last Sunday marked the 50th anniversary of the world’s most horrific but long-secret space catastrophe when 126 people were burned alive during a launch pad accident.

During the accident, which the Russian space agency

says was a veritable “inferno”, people were burned alive or vaporised altogether, while others died of noxious fumes or succumbed to burns later.

Authorities and relatives of those who died in this accident and others held a memorial service at the Baikonur cosmodrome and also laid flowers at their mass graves.

In 1960 the Soviet Union, locked in a space race with the United States, was developing an intercontinental ballistic missile known as the R-16, and on October 24 that year was scheduled to launch a prototype rocket when it exploded on the launch pad.

“People died in horrific pain, essentially burning alive, but the country and the rest of the world practically never learnt anything about that terrible catastrophe and its heroes-victims,” Russian space agency Roscosmos said.

“To this day it is considered the most horrific (tragedy) in the history of space exploration,” the agency said in a statement.

The Russian space agency, citing Soviet scientist Boris Chertok, says 126 people died, but also notes that the exact number of casualties is hard to pin down and may range between 60 and 150.

The testing crew accidentally initiated the second stage of the rocket, which ignited the first stage causing the disaster.

Those closest to the rocket were “more or less vaporised, and many of the victims only later succumbed to their burns,” the space agency said in a separate statement in English.

Known as the “devil’s venom”, the rocket fuel was so noxious that those who jumped into blast wells to escape the “inferno” were found asphyxiated, the space agency said.

In the West, the tragedy is referred to as the Nedelin disaster, after the commander of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces, Mitrofan Nedelin, who oversaw the rocket programme and died along with designers and testers.

During the test, Konstantin Gerchik, head of the Baikonur cosmodrome at the time, asked Nedelin to step aside for safety reasons.

Nedelin refused. “Am I not the officer just like the rest?” Gerchik remembered Nedelin telling him, according to excerpts of his memoirs carried by the state news agency RIA Novosti.

The only thing that was left of the marshal was a pin by which he was later identified, according to Gerchik’s previously classified memoirs.

Soviet authorities led by Nikita Khrushchev imposed total secrecy over the accident.

The Pravda newspaper, the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party, said Nedelin had perished in a plane crash, NTV channel said, which estimated 74 people burned alive and more than 50 received injuries.

The files on the launch failure were only declassified in the 1990s.

By coincidence, on the same day three years later a fire at a launch pad killed another seven testers.

In the wake of the two accidents, October 24 is known as “a black day” for space exploration on which Russian officials commemorate the memory of all those who dedicated their lives to the space programme.

Space officials do not schedule any launches on this day.

Sending the first man into space in 1961 and launching the first sputnik satellite four years earlier are among key accomplishments of the Soviet space programme and remain a major source of national pride in Russia.

How many Soviets perished in its rush to space will likely never be known.

In an astonishing moment of political correctness a Michigan woman is in trouble with the Fair Housing bureaucrats for posting an ad at her church seeking a Christian roommate. She is accused of a civil rights violation. She could ask for a woman but can not specify anything else.

Survey USA results also show falling support for Proposition 19 to decriminalize marijuana. The ballot measure “no longer is favored in SurveyUSA polling, for the first time in 7 tracking polls,” the survey folks said.

The pollsters said a “no” on Prop 19 is not yet a clear favorite but there is “enough of a ‘Yes’ erosion for backers to be gravely concerned.” Seems to be driven by seniors who are opposed. It must get over 50%.

Republican House candidates brought in $104 million from July through September, compared with $89 million for Democrats, according to Federal Election Commission reports. In Senate races, Republican candidates raised almost $60 million, while Democrats had a haul of less than $40 million.

Overall, this midterm election season will be the most expensive in history, with nearly $1 billion having been spent on House races alone.

Last weekend a long lost boyhood friend from the tiny West Virginia coal mining and steel town where we two grew up together, called to catch up on the last 4-5 decades. He found me through this newsletter sent him from a mutual acquaintance, and an email resulted in the call. .

We chatted about the U. S. Senate race, the legend of Tailgunner Joe McCarthy who ignited his anti-communism campaign with a famous firebrand speech in Wheeling, W. Va., people we’d known, and things we remember.

We talked about the terror of hearing the mine whistle sound of a cave in, and standing in the school windows to watch the e-car race by. We spoke of the bravery or shock of our 3^rd grade teacher, “Birdlegs Liston” when upon hearing her husband fell under a train and had his legs cut off continued the class. He asked if I remembered when old Mr. Sloniker had his head cut off in an accident right behind the school yard at noon and the firemen washing the blood away before it ran onto the basketball court. I do indeed .

We agreed that we both regretted our own children not having  had the adventures we had on the banks of the Ohio River catching enormous rats to pit against cats at the B & O round house in bloody, fatal contest.

He recalled when my then nearly 70-year-old grandfather took me trick or treating him dressed in long johns; a woman’s bathing suit, hand- made sash and mop wig shamelessly strutted before hooting friends to win the Halloween Parade. He reminded me how it was the one night we children could ignore the 9:30 PM curfew and prowl the streets committing minor mayhem.  He told me how he envied me having both sets of grandparents, one pair of great grandparents and an aunt and uncle on every corner and cousins galore.

But, it was bitter sweet.  He told me he was dying and wouldn’t see this Halloween. We ended laughing about our setting the city storm drain afire sending the volunteer fire department into near panic action. Then he said he felt tired and we had to hang up.

I am glad we talked- it was very pleasant if sad.