Subject:Encina Update (reunions/74/jubilee/fame/siblings/directory/teachers/fame/netzero/columbine/mailstation/humor/search/books/whats new) Date:Wed, 9 Jun 1999 11:52:27 -0700 ENCINA ALUMNI, The Update is coming out early this week as I will be on vacation Thursday and Friday. My wife's family is having a big reunion in Davis this Saturday with relatives from all over the US, including two from Japan who are arriving Thursday and staying with us. We're taking them to the Mystery Spot and Monterey Aquarium on Friday before the reunion. REUNIONS For those classes having reunions this year, if you would include the URL of the Encina website in your mailings I would appreciate it! As I mentioned before, although I automatically forward contact information forms to the class reunion contact, I often forget to notify reunion contacts about siblings and friends from their class. Please scan the updates carefully for alumni from your class. If you fill out the NetMinder form at the bottom of your class directory, you'll be automatically informed when I update your class directory. NetMind will even email you the updated page if you tell them to. Bob Goosman 74 and Ridgley Reece 68 sent me some reunion tips which I used to form the basis of a "Reunion Guide" page: http://www.encinahighschool.com/reunionguide.htm Ridgley has planned numerous events and was a paid special events planner. She would be happy to advise anyone needing assistance. You can contact Ridgley at: RidgleyElisabeth_RRMtnDesign@compuserve.com The classes which plan to have reunions this year are: 1964 1969 Alan Dankman (adankman@worldnet.att.net) 1973 Mini-reunion: Rett Smart (irsmart@ix.netcom.com) 1974 Bob Goosmann (Magusbob@hotmail.com) 1979 Laura Graff Allred (pacwest@foothill.net) Great Reunions: info@greatreunions.com 1984 1989 Janice Barnes (jabarnes@dttus.com) 1994 Candy Mleczko (candym229@hotmail.com) CLASS OF 1974 Bob Goosmann writes: Plans for the Class of '74 25-year reunion are proceeding well. Our biggest challenge right now is putting together our mailing list. Anyone with any information on former classmates is urged to e-mail the info to Julie Eissenger Meador at LMeador@compuserve.com, or call Bob Goosmann at (916) 649-9141. And please pass this message along to any alumni with whom you're in contact. Also, we are looking for donations of prizes for a raffle the night of the reunion, with proceeds to go to our reunion fund. Please contact Julie or Bob if you have something to donate. Mark your calendars now for the evening of September 25, and for more information on the reunion, see the Class of '74 home page. JUBILEE I've added the pictures I took at the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee to the Photos section of Mike Pittsley 71, Tom Phillips 65 and Shelley Burns 70: Ken Johnson 67 wrote: "If memory serves me, Shelley Burns ( Avalon Swing ) graduated from Encina too. I think it was in ' 68 or ' 69. That was when John Knurr was our band teacher. He started the first dixieland band in ' 66/67. We were called "The Bell Street Housewreckers " Members were; Lon Steiner drums, Charlie Knight tuba, Emmett O' Sullivan piano, Dan Ward trumpet, Chuck ? trombone and myself Ken Johnson clairnet. I know John Knurr comes out every year to the Jazz festival. It would be a gas to put this group together and play again." Sure enough, I checked my 70 yearbook and Shelley Burns graduated from Encina in 1970. This morning I was pleasantly surprised to receive a contact form from Shelley herself! Shelley heard about the Encina website from her sister Shauna Burns 73 (not from Tom Phillips 65). Welcome aboard Shelley. The URL for Shelley Burns and Avalon Swing: I would have taken more pictures of Shelley at the Jubilee if I'd know she was an Encina alumni... HALL OF FAME I've added Shelley Burns 70 to the Hall of Fame, now that I know she's an Encina alumni. Eric Mandell 71 writes: My former neighbors,the Fahn brothers, have been significant achievers since their graduation from Encina. Larry ('72) is an attorney of note in the San Francisco area and has gained prominence for his activities with the Sierra Club, Mike ('73) is currently promoting a series of summer concerts in Sacramento, featuring the Doobie Brothers among others, at a new venue in Discovery Park. He's had some major successes, including bringing the Stones to San Diego in 1982. Ken ('76) is a real estate developer with some very tasteful projects in Sacramento's downtown area. Don't know what's up with Rob ('77). I believe he's in SoCal working as a developer. Larry Fahn 72 writes: Larry Fahn, '72, was recently elected to the national Board of Directors of the Sierra Club, the nation's oldest and most politically influential environmental organization, with more than half a million members in the US and Canada, where he serves alongside such environmental luminaries as David Brower, Michelle Perrault and Adam Werbach. Larry has been Sierra Club California's Political Chair since 1995, and has been an environmental and political activist in the Bay Area for more than twenty years. See the Sierra Club's website (www.sierraclub.org) for a more complete picture, including Larry's ballot statement from the recent Board election. A civil litigation attorney since graduating from U.C. Davis and Hastings Law School, Larry also serves as Executive Director of AS YOU SOW FOUNDATION, a San Francisco based non-profit organization which targets pollutors, holds corporations accountable promotes toxics reduction and environmental education (www.asyousow.org). As a Sierra Club Board member, Larry's environmental priorities include reauthorizing and strengthening the Endangered Species Act, ending commericial logging on our public lands, stopping sprawl, and protecting open space, wilderness areas and farm land. He even has the crazy idea that grizzly bears, our state logo and icon, could be reintroduced into one or more wilderness areas within the Golden State. Larry lives in Mill Valley, California with his girlfriend and three dogs, and still enjoys mountain biking on nearby Mount Tamalpais, skiing and backpacking. He can be reached by fellow Encina grads at (415) 391-32-46. SIBLINGS Karen Spence McClernon 83 (married to Matthew McClernon 83) found the Encina website. The following McClernons have email. Julia McClernon 78 Rebecca McClernon 80 Matthew McClernon 83 Mitchell McClernon 86 Karen Spence 83 also has two siblings: Karen Spence 83 Cheryl Spence 85 Kellie Spence 87 Amy McClelland 86 wrote: Dan McClelland 82 Amy McClelland 86 David Fischer 79 wrote: Bob Fischer 77 David Fischer 79 Ken Kreutzer 78 wrote: Ken Kreutzer 78 Bill Kreutzer 80 Pamela McNevin 90 wrote: Debra McNevin 89 Pamela McNevin 90 Debbie Burruss 73 wrote: Debbie Burruss 73 Ron Lane 73 (stepbrother) Grebitus siblings: Ted Grebitus 69 Tom Grebitus 71 Bill Grebitus 72 Bob Grebitus 74 Katie Grebitus 75 Amy Grebitus 79 Cheree Caron 75 wrote: Cheree Caron 75 Terry Caron 77 Frank Caron 78 Susan Hobson 84 wrote: Chuck Hobson 80 Linda Hobson 81 Susan Hobson 84 Linh Vuong 94 wrote: Hai Vuong 94 Linh Vuong 94 Son Vuong 97 Shelley Burns 70 wrote: Sally Burns 69 Shelley Burns 70 Sherri Burns 71 Shauna Burns 73 Debi Hobday 80/81 wrote about her step-siblings: Susan Kehoe 72 Michael Kehoe 74 Lori Kehoe 76 Tammy Kehoe 77 DIRECTORY Debi Hobday 80/81 went through her yearbooks and sent me a long email describing alumni she is directly or indirectly in contact with: Susan Kehoe 72 Michael Kehoe 74 Lori Kehoe 76 Tammy Kehoe 77 Debbie Martinez 72 Nina Martinez 76 Charles Martinez 77 Primo Martinez 77 Christine Montoya 77 Keven Cull 79 Jim Parino 79 Craig Watson 79 Clyde Calhoun 80 Michelle Cassady 80 David Smith 80 Chris Wilson 80 Tonja Howell 81 Lisa Brent 82 Debbie Totaro 82 I've added these alumni to their respective class directories but do not have their contact information myself. Please contact Debi Hobday at debi36@cwnet.com for information on reaching these alumni. TEACHERS Amy McClelland 86 wrote that Encina teacher Karen McClelland is her mother and Encina teacher Bill Lee is her stepfather! HALL OF FAME I've created a new category for Encina teachers and staff whose children attended Encina. First members are the McClelland family. Karen McClelland taught English and Yearbook before becoming a counselor at Encina. Her children Dan McClelland 82 and Amy McClelland 86 attended Encina. There's also Andy Braio and his daughters Angie 84, Amy 86, and Rebecca 87. I'm sure there are others. Please write. NETZERO I installed the free ISP NetZero software at home and it works fine. You click on a NetZero icon on your desktop and it dials the local NetZero access number (there are two in Sacramento). It launches the little NetZero ad banner which is not very big if you have an 800x600 display or larger. Plus you can turn on the title bar and buttons and make the ad banner even smaller. You cannot get rid of the ad banner as this is why the service is FREE. NetZero uses your existing browser and does not seem to interfere with my ATT WorldNet account. Since WorldNet restricts you from simultaneous logons, we use NetZero when I want to log in to the internet from more than one of our PCs. It's also a good backup in case your primary ISP is down. NetZero also gives you an email address and you can send/receive NetZero email from your normal email software (Eudora, Netscape, etc). You do have to answer lots and lots of questions which they use to tailor the ads you see but it's worth saving $20/month. I gotten a couple busy signals when I was trying to connect to NetZero's local access numbers and it's not clear to me whether free internet access is a viable business model. As NetZero becomes more popular, it'll probably become harder to connect but for now it works reasonably well. For those of you without internet access to download the 5mb Netzero installation file, I've created a set of four floppies which contain the Netzero software. Send me four floppies and enough money to cover return postage and I'll send you the floppies with instructions for installing NetZero. COLUMBINE Lisa Kroll 82 sent me the following article: PAUL HARVEY ON LITTLETON Paul Harvey read this Letter to the Editor on his newscast a couple of weeks ago. It was tracked down on the Internet through the San Angelo Standard - Times; give them full credit for this article. "4/27/99 How can we blame it all on guns? For the life of me, I can't understand what could have gone wrong in Littleton, Colorado. If only the parents had kept their children away from the guns, we wouldn't have had such a tragedy. Yeah, it must have been the guns. It couldn't have been because of half our children being raised in broken homes. It couldn't have been because our children get to spend an average of 30 seconds in meaningful conversation with their parents each day. After all, we give our children quality time. It couldn't have been because we treat our children as pets and our pets as children. It couldn't have been because we place our children in day care centers where they learn their socialization skills among their peers under the law of the jungle while employees who have no vested interest in the children look on and make sure that no blood is spilled. It couldn't have been because we allow our children to watch, on the average, seven hours of television a day filled with the glorification of sex and violence that isn't fit for adult consumption. It couldn't have been because we allow our children to enter into virtual worlds in which, to win the game, one must kill as many opponents as possible in the most sadistic way possible. It couldn't have been because we have sterilized and contracepted our families down to sizes so small that the children we do have are so spoiled with material things that they come to equate the receiving of the material with love. It couldn't have been because our children, who historically have been seen as a blessing from God, are now being viewed as either a mistake created when contraception fails or inconveniences that parents try to raise in their spare time. It couldn't have been because we give two-year prison sentences to teenagers who kill their newborns. It couldn't have been because our school systems teach the children that they are nothing but glorified apes who have evolutionized out of some primordial soup of mud by teaching evolution as fact and by handing out condoms as if they were candy. It couldn't have been because we teach our children that there are no laws of morality that transcend us, that everything is relative and that actions don't have consequences. What the heck, the president gets away with it. Nah, it must have been the guns." MAILSTATION Here's an article from the WSJ about a clever device called the MailStation which allows the technically "impaired" to have email at a reasonable cost. I'm sure we all have friends and relatives who want email but not the burden of maintaining a PC. A Clever New Gadget Makes E-Mail Very Easy by Walter Mossberg, WSJ MY MOTHER has been sending me e-mail lately. To some of you, that's no big deal. But my Mom is 75 years old and has never touched a computer. She's a smart woman, a formidable woman, just not a woman who cares to spend her golden years wrestling with a personal computer. So, Rhoda Mossberg wasn't on e-mail. But that was before the MailStation people arrived in my office. The MailStation is a new $99 e-mail machine, small and friendly and intended for computer-averse people like my mother, and millions of others even younger. It's from Cidco of Morgan Hill, Calif., a big maker of telephone gear such as caller-ID boxes. The machine nominally goes for $149 and comes with built-in e-mail service that costs $10 a month. But if you pay for a year of service up front, you get the machine for $99 and the service for another $99 for the year, or $8.25 a month for an unlimited number of e-mail messages. Cidco wanted me to try out the MailStation, which goes on sale this week directly from the company at www.cidco.com. I said I wouldn't do it unless they lent my mother a unit to try out as well. If it could get her to use e-mail, I said, I'd be impressed. And I am impressed. After a few weeks, she's got the hang of the device and she loves exchanging e-mail with children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews. The MailStation is the latest in a new class of devices I've been advocating for years, called information appliances. Unlike a general-purpose PC, which tries to do everything and winds up being way too complex, these appliances are customized for performing only a handful of digital tasks very easily and well. Examples of info appliances around today are the Palm handheld computers, WebTV set-top boxes and Sony PlayStation game machines. All are computers, but they're not general-purpose computers. Many more are coming. A company called InfoGear, for example, will soon announce a screen phone that can not only do e-mail, but also Web surfing and regular voice phone calls, using a built-in keyboard and a gray-scale screen. The phone will be offered by various companies at between $299 and $399, with service likely to be $20 a month. Cidco's MailStation is a simple tablet smaller than a piece of business paper that weighs just two pounds. There's a decent-size keyboard topped by a small monochrome screen that can be tilted up for easier reading. The screen holds about a dozen lines of text and is very crisp and easy to read, though the text size can be enlarged by just touching a special button on the keyboard. It plugs into any phone line and has a second phone jack so you can keep your phone hooked up. My Mom uses it smoothly with both a phone and an answering machine on her single phone line. The machine plugs into the wall, but can also be carried around because it runs on two AA batteries that last about a month with typical use. Setup is very easy. When you order the MailStation, all the technical Internet information, and even the local phone number it uses, are programmed in by the factory. (You can easily change these if you take the machine to another location.) My mother did consult my cousin David, the family electronics whiz, to make sure the phone lines were connected properly, but she probably could have done it alone. My 10-year old niece Rachel, a savvy computer user, walked her through some functions. The MailStation is deliberately limited. It only does e-mail, not Web surfing. And even the e-mail it provides is just basic, text e-mail. It won't deliver attached files, or pictures. It also cuts off messages after about 1,000 words. You can, however, get attachments and long messages, free of charge, via a Web-based e-mail service that uses your same MailStation account. For an extra $3 a month, you can add up to four more users to the machine, each with a separate address. To check your e-mail, you just press a blue key called "Get E-Mail." The MailStation dials in and retrieves any waiting messages, and sends any e-mail you composed offline. You can also set it to check for e-mail automatically, once a day or hourly. If there's new mail, a light comes on. It can store between 300 and 400 e-mail messages, though my Mom likes to delete all her e-mail messages immediately after reading them. It's the same neatness impulse that causes her to toss out newspapers nanoseconds after they're read. The MailStation tries to automate and simplify most functions. The spell checker is invoked by just pressing a button on the keyboard. You can add the authors of incoming e-mail to your address book by just pressing the "Add Author" key. Another key lets you search through stored e-mail, and others let you quickly reply to or forward your messages. If you start typing an address that's in your address book, the machine automatically completes it for you. There are some downsides. The MailStation is supposed to let you print e-mail messages to any common PC printer, just by hooking up a cable. But I couldn't get it to print. It also keeps a list of e-mail messages you've sent, but not the bodies of sent messages. And the spell checker can't learn words. Overall, however, the MailStation does what it promises to do, and my mother is delighted with it. Still, she isn't a total digital convert just yet. "This doesn't excuse you from calling me," she warns me. "I still want to hear your voice." HUMOR Paul Williams 67 writes: In 1966 I was Marshall Morrisey's lab partner in physiology. One day Robin Smith came into class very uncharacteristically late (Robin was an A student). Mr. Figenshu said "So Robin Red Breast what makes you late today?"? Marshall blurted out from the back of the class "How would you know what color her breast is". If life starts to get you down, and you are feeling sorry for yourself, just be glad that all you have to deal with is life's little problems here in the 1900's, unlike our ancestors in the 1500's. Life in the 1500's: Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and were still smelling pretty good by June, although some were starting to smell, so brides carried bouquets of flowers to hide the body odor. Baths equaled a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "don't throw the baby out with the bath water". Houses had thatched roofs. Thick straw, piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the pets... dogs, cats and other small animals, mice, rats, bugs lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying, "It's raining cats and dogs". There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could really mess up your nice clean bed, so they found that if they made beds with big posts and hang a sheet over the top, it addressed that problem. Hence those beautiful big 4 poster beds with canopies. The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt, hence the saying "dirt poor". In the winter, the floors would get slippery when wet. So they spread thresh on the floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on they kept adding more thresh until when you opened the door it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed at the entry way, hence a "thresh hold". They cooked in the kitchen in a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They mostly ate vegetables and didn't get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes the stew had food in it that had been in there for a month. Hence the rhyme: peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old." Sometimes they could obtain pork and would feel really special when that happened. When company came over, they would bring out some bacon and hang it to show it off. It was a sign of wealth and that a man "could really bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and "chew the fat." Most people didn't have pewter plates, but had trenchers - a piece of wood with the middle scooped out like a bowl. Trencher were never washed and a lot of times worms got into the wood. After eating off wormy trenchers, they would get "trench mouth." Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the "upper crust". Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination of lead and alcohol would sometimes knock them out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a "wake". England is old, small and they started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take their bones to a house and re-use the grave. In reopening these coffins, one out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they thought they would tie a string on their wrist and lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night to listen for the bell. Hence on the "graveyard shift" they would know that someone was "saved by the bell" or he was a "dead ringer". ALUMNI SEARCH 1975 Greg Grant 1989 Kristy Bassett 1994 Janice Garcia Trudy Graham BOOKS This week I'm reading "Mr White's Confession" by Robert Clark: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312192177/encinahighschool I heard about this book from the amazon mystery mailing newsletter and it's a Raymond Chandleresque mystery with some amazing prose. This writer comes up with some really original metaphors and descriptions. Highly recommended. Another good mystery I read recently was Steve Hamilton's "A Cold Day in Paradise": http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312192487/encinahighschool This book received "Best First Private Eye Novel" from the Private Eye Writes of America. Had me guessing to the very end. WHAT'S NEW Lots of activity this week. 6/8/99: Susan Hobson 84, Carl Lenocker 94, Amy Grebitus 79, Linh Vuong 94/bio, Hai Vuong 94, Son Vuong 97, Jeff McGee 93, Chad Henry 94 6/7/99: Lori Siemion 81, Cheree Caron 74/75/bio, Terry Caron 77, Frank Caron 78, Melodie Stephen 75, Cindy Jones 75 6/6/99: David Fischer 79 bio, Robyn Gentle 89/bio, Lisa Faseler 89, Ken Kreutzer 78, Deana Johnson 94 bio, Jolyn Saia 74, Pamela McNevin 90/bio, Josef McCarter 89, Mike Davis 90 6/4/99: Larry Fahn 72 bio, Lou Fatur 79, Todd McDole 86, Susan Kehoe 72, Michael Kehoe 74, Lori Kehoe 76, Tammy Kehoe 77, Debbie Martinez 72, Nina Martinez 76, Charles Martinez 77, Primo Martinez 77, Keven Cull 79, Jim Parino 79, Craig Watson 79, Clyde Calhoun 80, Michelle Cassady 80, David Smith 80, Chris Wilson 80, Tonja Howell 81, Lisa Brent 82, Debbie Totaro 82 6/3/99: Cyndi La Cornu 75 bio, Katie Grebitus 75, Sheri McDonell 75, Chad Crall 98/bio, Amy McClelland 86, Dan McClelland 82 Teachers: Jan Buzolich, Karen McClelland Lee Photos: added Sacramento Jazz Jubilee photos 6/2/99: Damon Purdy 98, Karen Spence 83, Cheryl Spence 85, Kellie Spence 87, Julia McClernon 78, Mitchell McClernon 86, Matthew McClernon 78, Rebecca McClernon 80, Shelley Burns 70 Store: Twin Star Designs Reunion Guide: added page with suggestions for planning reunions Have a good weekend! Harlan Lau 73 Encina webmaster www.encinahighschool.com harlan@rambus.com