Douglas L. Ross - My Personal Reflections

We got to see our new grandson Wyatt this weekend. He looks like his father.

I read this rather sad article today about the Reader's Digest declaring bankruptcy and it made me think of my father. He was born and raised in rural Kentucky and was a bit dyslectic. As a result I don't think they taught him how to read properly. Consequently, reading was difficult for him his whole life and in his youth he was not well read at all. Reader's Digest was a godsend for my Dad because it was short, to the point, easy to read in larger type, and with content that was interesting, timely, educational, often inspiring, and nearly always wholesome. The Reader's Digest became an indispensable part of his life and practically the only thing he ever read besides the Bible. He read every issue cover to cover and sometimes more than once. He was so attached to it that he just could not bring himself to throw out the old issues he had read. Our house was always littered with stacks and stacks of past Reader's Digest issues. I have to admit that although I'...

From Douglas L Ross' Weblog My youngest son Jason and his wife Christy just had their first child. His name is Jason Wyatt Ross and he was born Wednesday, August 12, 2009 at about 2:00pm at the Emory John's Creek hospital in John's Creek, Georgia. Little Wyatt was a healthy 7 lbs 9 oz and 20 inches long. He's just about the cutiest newborn you've ever seen. Mother and son are doing just great and so is my son, the new daddy. We're very proud of them all and we wish Jason and Christy the very best as they embark on the life adventure of parenthood with little Wyatt.

My youngest son Jason and his wife Christy are at the hospital as we speak waiting for our newest grandson to arrive. We're on our way. Say a prayer that everything goes well.

Yet another historic milestone in my life has passed. In late 1973, I was working in Los Angeles for Rockwell International. Being mid-westerners, we didn't take that well to the California lifestyle and I absolutely hated the LA comute (from the San Fernando Valley). About that time a headhunter in San Deigo called me and said they were looking for some kind of business development guy at a little company called WD-40 and was I interested? Even though I didn't know who WD-40 was or what they did, I decided to check it out. I went down for an interview and it turned out that that interview was with John Barry. I've never had a more interesting interview, he was a facinating guy. I'll never know whether or not I would have gotten the job at WD-40 (I think I might have), because before I had heard anything back from Barry I'd already gotten another offer from a friend back in Wisconsin, and we jumped at the chance to get back to the mid-west. One of those forks in the...

The date was July 20, 1969 when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon at 20:17:40 UTC according to NASA. (For those who like precision, Neil stepped onto the Sea of Tranquility 0°40′26.69″N 23°28′22.69″E / 0.6740806°N 23.4729694°E / 0.6740806; 23.4729694 based on the IAU Mean Earth Polar Axis coordinate system .) I will never forget that date and time because I witnessed this historic event at 3:17 pm in the induction center at Fort Leonard Wood Missouri. It was a very odd moment in my life. I had left my wife early that morning in a very frightened and emotional state by herself in Milwaukee; travelled all day by busses without airconditioning in 100+ degree heat; met up along the way in various little towns with what seemed to me at the time to be a very ragtag and slightly dangerous bunch of fellow draftees; and then arrived at Leonard Wood to the welcome of a bunch of screaming Drill Sargents just 30 minutes before Neil's famous landing. Mostly because the Drill Sargents want...

I think this January 3, 2003 entry was my first Blog post using Dave Winer's Radio UserLand software. I've long since moved on to Blogger, but it's still a little sad to see Radio UserLand go away. It seems like I'm having more and more of these senior moments lately when something memorable rides off into the sunset.

My son Jason and his wife Cristy couldn't make it to the traditional Ross family vacation in Florida this year. Cristy is expecting our fifth grandchild and the date was too near, so we included them in the family photo with a picture instead of the real thing, wishing they were with us. Vacation was great, too short.

I love the website "on-this-day.com" because it's so interesting to have a glimpse back in time each day at special things that happened on this day. I was surfing their site today and peeked at a related link which they maintain with the birthdays of famous people. I discovered that one of my hero's (Bret Farve, already a legendary Green Bay Packers quarterback at just 40 years of age) was born on October 10, 1969. This happens to also be my birthday. Pretty cool.

From all of us in the Ross Family, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New year.

We just returned from two wonderful weeks hiking and sightseeing in Yellowstone and Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I hadn't been to Yellowstone or the Grand Tetons since I was a kid, nearly fifty years ago and then only briefly. I had completely forgotten how awe inspiring those mountains are and how humbling it is to be a little flyspeck on that vast landscape. In addition to the fantastic scenery we were very lucky to see both Grizzly and Black Bears, Moose, Elk, Wolves, Eagles and lots of Buffalo. One of the Bear encounters was particularly exciting because we had to quickly jump into our car when the big Grizzly charged up a hill and went right behind our car. I snapped the picture below out the back window as the Park Ranger was yelling and we were diving into our car.

Some people fit each other perfectly and are simply meant to be together. My uncle Kendall Ross and his beautiful bride Anna Rae Rowe were such a couple. Last year, after nearly sixty years of marriage, Kendal died and left Anna Rae alone for the first time in her life. It was incredibly sad and I simply cannot imagine how lonely she must have been. This past week Anna Rae died, essentially of a broken heart. We're sad that she's gone and we'll miss her very much but we're all convinced that she's in a better place now, reunited with the love of her life, her friend, her protector, her companion, her everything. They made our lives better; they helped us all grow up with a wonderful model of goodness and decency; they were both deeply respected in the community for their work ethic, their penchant for helping others and the devotion to God and the church; and they also taught us that you can be good but still have fun. Someone said once that the real measure of a p...

My wife Joy and I celebrated our 40 th wedding anniversary this past weekend with our children and grand-children. We were on lovely Sea Island, Georgia watching this spectacular sunrise and wondering how it was possible that forty years could have gone by so quickly. We had a lot of fun telling all the old stories about how we met, and courted, and married, and brought up the kids. Lots of laughs and a few tears as well. We've been through good times and bad together. We've both worked hard, had a few disappointments, but basically have accomplished mostly good things. We've had good health, loving families, good friends, three fine sons we're very proud of, wonderful daughter's-in-law who are perfect for our boys, and four of the best grandchildren ever. Life doesn't really get any better than that. We've really been blessed and we thank God for that. Now we're working to keep our health and live to celebrate forty more.

So do I really look like any of these people? Facebook's facial recognition software thinks so but I think it leaves something to be desired. However, it's an indication of what might be possible some day. I really want some kind of software that identifies people in pictures so that I can organize the mess of pictures that we've taken since the invention of the scanner and the digital camera. I estimated the other day that we have something on the order of 20,000 pictures. At the rate of say 30 seconds each to; identify who is in the picture (likely multiple people), when & where the picture was taken, record that information so it's associated with the picture file, etc. would take approximately 168 hours (the number of hours in a whole week working 24/7). That will never happen without some way to automate the process. I'm still looking for a good way to do it.

Having reached the age when I could get Social Security if I chose to and where the probabilities start working against you for continued good health and an active lifestyle, I decided it might be wise to think more seriously about retirement sooner vs later. When you approach the retirement decision, it leads you almost immediately to the question of can you afford it? For example, Google the word retirement and you get about 90 million hits where the top 1000 or so are almost all about the money. (Curiously, Google hits on retirement seem to vary between 88.5 million and 91.5 million. I wonder if there are 3.0 million of so out there who are like me and just can't make up our minds?) So I did the retirement calculator thing and I'm OK, I can afford to retire when I choose to. Check, that's not the problem? So what is the problem? The problem for me is what to do with my time and my mind in retirement. There is a surprisingly large ontology of topics associated with or rea...

A friend of mine pointed me to some interesting stats recently: Studies show that the average American golfer walks about 900 miles each year Other studies found that the average American golfers drink ~22 gallons of alcohol each year That means, on average, American golfers get about 41 miles to the gallon. A stat that k ind of makes you proud.

I made three resolutions this year: Stay Alive - I have type 2 diabetes . I like to eat and I don't like to exercise, but I want to stay alive long enough to see my grandchildren grow up. So in 2007 I radically changed my lifestyle and in 2008 I plan to learn to like it. Listen More - I do not pay enough attention to what others are saying to me. I'm often too involved in proving my point to listen properly and consequently I "tune" people out when I could really learn a lot. I am especially bad about this with Joy, my wife of forty years who I love very much, and I hereby publicly apologize. Write Something Every Day - It's Jan 4 th and I'm already three days behind...oh well, so much for resolutions . But I don't think I'm alone. Like many others who initially enjoyed blogging and wrote a lot, it became tedious for me and was interfering with my work. However, stating your opinion in writing (in complete sentences ) is a good discipline . One mus...

No matter how many times you witness the birth of a child, it never ceases to be just the most amazing and wonderful gift from God there could ever possibly be. I had that pleasure again this past Thursday (October 4, 2007) when my son Patrick and his wife Ann became proud parents for the first time. Parker Alexander Ross (5lbs 12oz) was a few weeks early but thankfully, mother and son are both doing great. As you can see, Parker has a full head of wavy black hair, he's pink as a bunny and as beautiful a baby as there ever was. You can't tell from the photo but he's also got really big feet. Parker gets that from his daddy whose birth I remember to this day. Pat was a pretty baby too, but what I'll never forget is how big Pat's feet seemed to me at the time. It's odd the things that stick with you and that you never forget. Parker's birth will certainly be one of them. And we're looking forward to many years of watching him grow up and prosper.

I was born in Centertown, Kentucky. It's a small town (about 400 people, which is the same as the population in 1946 when I was born there). The town was incorporated in 1890 and the Centertown Baptist Church was established in 1907. I attended the 100th anniversery ceremony at the Church two weeks ago. It was a moving experience. One of the things that made it a moving experience is that I got to see so many people I've known all my life and hadn't seen in many years. It also brought back many great memories. My earliest recollection of the Church was nicely captured in the picture below of myself and my cousin Marilyn Morton at about the age of seven (1953) taken in the Centertown Church at my Aunt Junita Ross' wedding to Reed Renier. Afterward the Centertown celebration, I checked Wikipedia to see if anybody had posted an article about what I considered to be this significant historical event. Besides being 100 years old, the Centertown Baptist Church structure is al...

I would like to see the next President be a person who can "unite the country" is also a "competent manager" and can work not only "across party lines" but Internationally, in a non-partison and diplomatic way, to get things done. So what else is new, who wouldn't? Zobgy makes the argument that Bloomberg could be such a "leader" that his polls show 80% of Americans want. In some ways I wish it were true, I wouldn't mind voting for an independent and sending both parties a little message to clean up their act. But I doubt that it is true because the American people themselves are so sharply divided. And, the election process is not the place from which unity naturally flows because the whole process is focused on the negative...what's wrong with the other guy. Nothing I'm aware of from Bloomberg gives me the slightest comfort that he's thought about how he would "unite" or "lead" or even what his priorities ...