DAVY CROCKETT
WYATT EARP
GUNSMOKE
THE LAWMAN
BEANY & CECIL
COLT 45
CHEYENNE
BRONCO
JESSE JAMES
HOP-ALONG CASSIDY
KUKLA FRAN & OLLIE
SOUPY SALES
CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT
MAKE ROOM FOR DADDY
ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW
DICK VAN DYKE SHOW

And then you can select from this OTHER GREAT AUDIO: "THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE" with Red Skelton

"WHAT IT WAS WAS FOOTBALL with Andy Griffith

"HAMLET" with Andy Griffith

"HOMEGROWN TAMATERS" sung by composer Guy Clark

"HOMEGROWN TOMATERS" sung by John Denver

"MORNING HAS BROKEN" sung by Cat Stevens

"THE PLANETS" composed and conducted by Gustav Holtz

"GOD BLESS AMERICA with Kate Smith

"SPECIAL D-DAY BROADCASTS" as they happened

"LORD OF THE DANCE"

"WHEN IRISH EYES ARE SMILING" sung by Morton Downey Sr.

If we receive human testimony, testimony of God is greater
I John 9a

Prayerfully read, and reread as necessary, the verse printed above then read the Lenten Devotional that follows written by Dr. Thomas Q. Robbins, After you have absorbed the point he has made, spend a few moments in prayer using the suggestions offered. Wait a few moments in silence to let your Creator God speak to you. Voila! You've just had a "quiet time" and represent one of few believers who are serious about building a regular time of devotion and a closer intimacy with Jesus Christ.

Think About It
We give carefulo attention and much credence to the testimony of men and women who are eyewitnesseses to an event. But the testimony of God in not as a witness to the event of Jesus Christ, but the participant enfleshed in the man Jesus. Jesus is fully God and, at the very same time, fully human. Only God could do such a thing as an action of love and reconciliation to this sinful world. It is Almighty God who testifies that Jesus is the Christ.

Prayer
The testimony I want to believe and build my life on is your testimony, Lord. It’s your testimony in the flesh of Jesus Christ that shows me how much you love me and everyone else. You are the one who offered up your son to die for my sin. Praise your Holy name.

Think About This
Ultimate truth is from God alone.

Dr. Thomas Q. Robbins, Senior Pastor
University Park Methodist, Dallas, Texas

Harlan Kreklow, Maude's son-in-law and one Polski from Milwaukee we all tease, captured the meaning of Maude's life in a beautiful way. I want to share it with you:

Maude, you've lived through the terms of 18 presidents from Theodore Roosevelt to George W. Bush. You've lived through six major wars beginnng with World War I. The Titantic sunk when you were six years old and the last Tzar was thrown out of Russia when you were 11. Names like Man of War, Calvin Coolidge, Enrico Caruso, Fritz Crysler, Al Jolson, Babe Ruth, Albert Schweitzer and a host of thousands of others including the Beetles are not just names in history books for you. They have been your contemporaries. You experienced primitive telephones, gas light, horse travel and crystal radio sets to cell phones, cyber space, hundreds of millions of vehicles of every description, television, the Internet and space travel. What has past before your eyes and enteredinto your mind is truly the "stuff" of great novels. You've lived through the most exciting, exhilarating, wonderful, difficult, tragic, and challenging time in the history of the planet. You have live through 43% of our nation's history. What an incredible run you've had! And, we all so proud of you."

And this is what I have to say about Mom: What a woman -- that Maude Elsie Parfit Plunkett. Born in a small coal mining town just east of Pittsburgh where her dad, Tom Parfit, was an electrical engineer responsible for "air and light" in the mine back when 1800 turned into 1900. Tom was a Welsh coal miner who had the traditional golden singing voice and was a lay Bible teacher. He was the first Parfit to immigrate from the British Isles and was responsible for paying for all of his relatives who wanted to come to the Land of Opportunity and Promise. Two of his sisters tried it and didn't like it so he had to pay for their return passage. I'm not sure I would have done that.

The family later moved to McKee's Rocks where my grandfather served as an electrical engineer for the City of Pittsburgh Water Department. After high school, Maude began working for the dressmaking department of Horne's Department Store in Pittsburgh when she was 16 and in a matter of months became a buyer for all the materials the custom dressmakers used. They then had her traveling all over the back streets and warehouse areas of downtown Pittsburgh searching for materials used in dressmaking from buttons to bows. They were training her to become a buyer.

A woman, a young girl, a big city, a large corporation, an employee in training. My conservative mother didn't know it then and doesn't recognize it now, but she was a trail breaker. There were few women and especially young girls in the work force in the early 20's. She was in this job at Horne's when the Lord directed her to further her education at Moody Bible Institute -- again, not many women involved in higher education at that time in our culture.

In 1923, at age 17, she was on her way to Chicago by train to attend the Moody Bible Institute and enter the mission education program with thoughts of India. That first year she had ministries in downtown Chicago at such historic places as Pacific Garden Mission and Madison Avenue. That first year, sh met my Dad and the "Plunketts of Chicago." I'm so glad she did! From the thousands of feet of 16mm film my Dad took it's so easy to recognize how beautiful, self assured, and vivacious she was even as a teenager. No wonder my Dad fell for her. She was athletic, intelligent, committed to living for the Lord, and so very beautiful.

Harvey sent me this set of one-liners that had me verbally expressing gutteral utternaces as I read them to Mary. Today, I discovered that I posted a set of Wright's stuff in Ramblin's two years ago. Time to do it again. Thanks Harvey for sending these gems. You can catch more of Nowland's offers on his Web site on the link below. Here are the clever One-Liners:

  1. I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.

  2. Borrow money from pessimists -- they don't expect it back.

  3. Half the people you know are below average.

  4. 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.

  5. 42.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

  6. A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.

  7. A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

  8. If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.

  9. All those who believe in psycho-kinesis, raise my hand.

  10. The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

  11. I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met.

  12. OK, so what's the speed of dark?

  13. How do you tell when you're out of invisible ink?

  14. If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

  15. Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

  16. When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

  17. Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.

  18. Hard work pays off in the future - laziness pays off now.

  19. I intend to live forever -- so far, so good.

  20. If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?

  21. Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

  22. What happens if you get scared half to death twice?

  23. My mechanic told me, "I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder."

  24. Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?

  25. If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.

  26. A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.

  27. Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

  28. The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.

  29. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.

  30. The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.

  31. The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up.

  32. The colder the x-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it.

  33. Everyone has a photographic memory, some just don't have film!

In 1972, arbitrary remodeling was done that removed the school's tower and the "plastering over" of the WPA murals in the main entrance lobby. Our friend, Ray Py, whom has been featured many times in Norm's Ramblins, did some investigating and discovered that the murals were not removed before plastering but just covered over with a half inch of the stuff and the wire that holds everything in place. In addition, drywall covered the beautiful art deco tile and a dropped ceiling covered the stunning multi-level ceiling and the gorgious sunburst where the original chandelier hung. Wonder who got that?

Ray Py began agitating, which he is an expert at doing, and three years ago began the movement to remove the plaster and restore the artwork. It's a great story you might be interested in reading. Use the link below to go to the Web site Peachtree Media does for my old high school. The home page of The Raider Room has an article that appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that gives an account of the last year of discovery and restoration of the mural.

The Dedication of the Mural Restoration will be Sunday, March 6, at 2 p.m. Everyone is invited to participate. That might be a good opportunity for a "cross-class" mini Tosa reunion. Afterwards, everyone could go to a local restaurant for coffee, an adult beverage, and good conversation that would allow "everyone" there to catch up on "everybody" there.

I also suggest that, while you're there, you click the TOSA ALERT button to learn about the events as they happened -- there are several monthly ALERTS that are written by Ray Py. Ray is a retired investigative reporter for UPI and was based in D.C. for many years. It will be a fun trip for you and an exciting one for those interested in art.

If you click the photos, you can get a larger view and really examine the detail.