Times we are curently living in.

Iraq/Hurricanes Katrina and Rita/ March on Washington to name a few,
Some family members particpated in. Where do we want our
money go? Dangerous disscussions subject on the
TLT Group website. very interesting, important and can be
Heavy. Bets Stewart

Steve and Sally Gilbert Skilled teachers

Steve and Sal, Real skilled teachers in many areas. Tonight to help with Wat's new laptop.
Thank you for helping us with reconnecting our e-mail account. Love,Bets

Finally, I now can post on the family blog

Now that I am here I hope everyone had a great summer! Love,Bets

Testing Nate's Cell Phone Camera

I just had a really nice visit with Nate in Boulder. We went on a little hike yesterday in one of several beautiful areas surrounding Boulder. Nate used his cell phone camera to take our picture and send a copy to me via email. It was waiting for me when I logged on to my AOL acct a few minutes ago. I could download his photo easily. Now I'm going to use the new photo insertion gimmick here on Blogger (6th little icon in a row - on the right end of the row of icons - just above this box where I'm now typing.

I'm back again - less than one minute. I hope you can now see the picture and this experiment was a success. That will only really happen AFTER I click "Publish Post" - the orange button about 1 1/2 inches below this box.
So, I'll do that now, then see if it worked. If it did, I'm going to log out and make myself go for a walk before I fall asleep.

Love to all,
Steve

Nighttrain - Amsterdam to Munich - Kathrin's Adventure Begins 8/28/2005 (arrived safely, tired next morning to meet up with Guilford group for fall term of study and bierstuben)

I am now a stoner

A rather shallow post to follow Steve's Anne Frank comments (though I have to agree...having been to both the DC Holocaust Museum and the Frank annex, seeing all the pictures on Anne Frank's walls and the other things that were completely normal and human were quite a bit more real and disturbing than anything a put together in the Holocaust museum).

That being said, a friend of mine got me hooked on The Stone, a mind-bender puzzle website thing that I've been really enjoying, dispite laying in bed at 5 AM trying to figure out things of which there are seven, one starting with an L and being 10 letters and another of which is 8 letters with L as the third letter. There's more to it than just that, but that's the part that had me awake at an ungodly hour. The reason I mention it here is that I can see many of you also enjoying it thoroughly (in that horribly frustrating way) and like the good addict I am, I want to pass it on. And don't say I didn't warn you.

Anne Frank House Visit 8/27/2005

Man in white jacket closest to window if father of boy in wheel chair. Picture taken from inside the admission area of the Anne Frank House, Amsterdam, Saturday August 27, 2005

Father had just come in before Sally, Kathrin & I bought our tickets and entered the house. The father was asking what sort of accommodations were available for his son. The answer was "none." But the father was persistent and asked several more detailed questions. He ended up accepting the conditions and saying that he would leave the wheel chair outside the house and do what he could to carry or help support his son as they worked their way up the narrow staircases and through the rooms of the "annex" in which the Anne Frank and her family and close friends managed to hide for more than two years during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam.

The father said that he would do this because visiting this house meant so much to his son.

We heard that more than 600,000 people make the trip to Amsterdam and take the time to wait in line, etc. to go through this house even now - 60 years after the Franks were taken from the house, and all died except the father and Anne Frank's writings.

For me, this was a more painfully moving experience than visiting the Holocaust museum in DC. As I went through the latter, I became kind of numb and simply couldn't grasp the magnitude of what we were being forced to see and what it represented. In the Anne Frank house, we were shown the details of a bizarre portion of a young girl's life with excruciating implications; but we weren't forced to face the concentration camp horrors until we had been fully engaged in this much more comprehensible and highly contained physical space and the other collected evidence of Anne Frank's life and vitality. For me, it made the holocaust aspects even more painful and incomprehensible.

And then we emerged into a beautiful end-of-summer day in Amsterdam 2005 and the pleasures of riding bicycles together and appreciating what it is to have a living daughter even more than usual. The day before she departs for a few months in Munich.

The Anne Frank house is a beautiful and terrible reminder of the evil we are capable of doing when we allow ourselves to see people as "others" who are somehow less than human, when we allow ourselves to do anything less than respect the spark of goodness and humanity we share, or to allow that spark to flicker out - in ourselves or in anyone else we can help.

Love to all,
Steve

Here (with a little luck) is a picture of a room quite similar to ours. Kathrin is in a cozier room across the hall.

Hotel Auberge du Bonheur in Tilburg, The Netherlands

New Hampshire Holiday 2005 - Josh & New Friend

Vicky, you never should have let Josh go to New Hampshire without you!

Nate emcees final performance of 2005 Windsock Theater Camp - August 12, 2005. Another tragi-comic triumph!

Zack's gridiron debut

Zack's gridiron debut:

Zack just completed first week of conditioning for his
upcoming tackle football season playing for the Mira
Mesa-Scripps team. He says my basketball practices
are like a nursery school compared to the ordeal he
went through last week. One more week of conditioning
then the hitting starts. We will try to send a
picture of a sweaty Zackman after one of his
conditioning sessions, helmut and all.

Love, the Aguirre-Gilbert's

Holding this space for posting, photo from Aguirre-Gilbert about Zack's intro into crazy world of football. Notice anything unusual about THIS photo?

Happy Birthday, Debra, wherever you are today! (Aug 6)

Fundraising T-Shirt - for Cleaning the Swimming "Pond" at Camp Catoctin

Other side of T-Shirt

Melting

Welcome, Gramma Dorthody, to the family blog!

It is currently 12 bazillion degrees at 1 AM in my new apartment. My dog has melted to my bed. But now that I'm here, Josh and Vicki- we should get together some time. I'm near Halsted and Diversy and I'll let you know when I get a Chicago phone #. Congrats on the new cats. Were my sister not allergic, I would have gotten a cat for my dog by now (he seems to hate dogs but gets along fine with cats...he's crazy, what can I say?!). If I ever get through unpacking all these stupid boxes (and the temperature in here dips below 93 million) I'd love to have you over for dinner. I'm a pretty good cook and I've recently taken to making berry pies.

Recognize this young man? This is "Before"!

Old hair?

Expecting Yul Brynner?

New hair?

Jill's New Apartment!

I am officially moving back to Chicago! Here is a map showing the location of my new apartment:

It's on the corner of Seminary and George. It has a real kitchen and character and I love the location. Josh and Vicki will have to come over for dinner when I move in.