How to decorate a Christmas tree

As you know, the CHS54 Staff hasn't exactly been inundated with pictures of fellow CHS seniors and their families that we asked for a few weeks ago. That's understandable with the holidays and all.

And then...then....last night...about the time Santa was settling down for his long winter nap...in comes an email from Maxcyne (Mott) Yaworsky with what has gotta be the prize winning picture of the year!

It is of her sixteen year old grand daughter, Nicole Hemsley and her beautiful 21 foot tall family Christmas tree which she decorated entirely with deep purple ornaments...

with her feet.

All right, all right.......maybe she didn't do it with her feet, nevertheless, it's still this website's picture of the year!

I'm reminded of the comment that the world renound philosopher, Jerry Lee Lewis, uttered after he had performed his classic version of "There's a Lot of Shaking Going on," ...and set the piano on fire.....

"Now let me see you top THAT!"

-Ed

Merry Christmas

Just Yesterday

Seems like it.

CHS 54  Fortieth Reunion Picture

But it's been 20 years since we celebrated our 40th.

But the REAL reason I've posted this picture on the website today is...

...well........

uh......I just like seeing these faces again!

-Ed

People in the news

Pajama Boy

Phil Robertson

The Obama Regime has a great answer whenever they come up with a "lead balloon" as off putting as Pajama Boy.

They say they did it on purpose..........."to get people talking."

Maybe that's why they came up with their great idea to destroy our economy, etc and come up with ObamaCare.

It sure worked, didn't it.

So did A & E's brilliant decision to fire Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty.

-Ed

"Go Forth....

and multiply."

This is the Don and Letty Nance family...beginning what I hope will be just the first of this website's 2013 Family Weblum. (Clever, eh?  Well, maybe not)  Nevertheless, hopefully, more of you will send in snapshops of your children, grandchildren, great grandchildren.........inlaws, outlaws, etc...(Just kidding).

Anyway, I'm sure our thousands of readers would love to see one or two of your holiday snapshots. I know I would!

The last time I requested pictures from this website's loyal fans, was about 4 years ago.....and the emailroom here at corporate headquarters was overwhelmed!

...with 3, or was it 4 snapshots.

Hopefully, I will have better luck this time!

(Rules:  There are none.)

The Don and Letty Nance Tribe

            First row: Sam, Asher, Jackson, Gabe

             Second row: Kim(Patrick's wife) and Roth(Charlotte's Husband)

             Third row: Patrick, Letty and  Charlotte

              Forth row: Stefanie( Tommy's wife) me and Ronda(Donnie's wife)

             Fifth row: Tommy,  Lindsey ( my step granddaughter), and Donnie

            At top: Nate( oldest grandson)

Be a part of the 2013 CHS54 WEBLUM !  
Email me your snapshots and let the whole class enjoy them!  

shephard@gmail.com

-Ed



And this one from Warren and Becky Sparrow.

Warren and Becky Sparrow

Hits from the Past

I thought this would be a good time to look back only a couple of years ago.


And YES, liberals.........I'm rubbing it in.  To quote our Dear Leader's Dear Leader, Jeremiah Wright, "Your Chickens.............have come home to roost!'

This was the front page of the CHS54 website on March 23, 2010

-Ed

OUR NEW DOCTORS                   March 23, 2010

Coming soon to a hospital near you.


AND......from now on, our health care is FREE!

Sixteen thousand NEW IRS agents are being hired now......to make DAMM sure it stays that way!





Liberals, please turn off the TV network newscasts. That's probably what screwed up your minds.
Conservatives, remember that those 16,000  IRS agents are still around.

-Ed

...and speaking of the Past

These wonderful pictures came in an email to me....titled only "MEMORY LANE"  I wish I could give credit to whoever collected these...I have no idea who that person is, but I won't let that stop me from passing them on to you to enjoy!

-Ed

December 7: Then And Now

This is a special December 7th 2013 Commentary

Our Sincere thanks to GrassTopsUSA  published at http://www.grasstopsusa.com/df120613.html.

Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941

Rearmament Versus Moral Disarmament

By Don Feder

       This will not be your typical Pearl Harbor Day commentary from a conservative – eternal vigilance as the price of liberty, Munich, look where appeasement gets you and all of that.

       What's really remarkable about December 7, 1941 isn't that we got sucker-punched by the Empire of Japan but how rapidly we recovered and why.

       Coming out of the worst depression in our history (in 1940, unemployment was still 17%), we fought a global war on two fronts, against the world's strongest military powers (fueled by fanaticism and plotting war for almost a decade) and won, becoming the dominant power on the planet in the process. And we did it all in three years and eight month after Pearl Harbor.

       It's all the more remarkable when you consider how far we came in that time. In June of 1940, the U.S. Army Air Corps had 51,000 pilots. The Royal Air Force had 500,000 pilots. The Luftwaffe had a million.

       In 1940, the U.S. Army was ranked 18th in the world – not just behind Germany, France, Russia, Britain, Italy and Japan, but also inferior to that of Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the Netherlands. We could have beaten Liechtenstein – with one hand tied behind its back.

       By the end of World War II, we had 16 million men in arms. Every month, thousands of aircraft, tanks and artillery pieces were rolling off assembly lines, as well as hundreds of thousands of weapons and millions of rounds of ammunition.

       What accounts for our incredible recovery after the devastating blow at Pearl Harbor? How did we go on the win the Battle of Midway exactly six months later? Why did Americans rush to enlist? Newspaper headlines the day after the attack spoke of young men "flocking" to recruiting offices and the services "swamped" by applications to enlist.

       What did we have then that we don't have now?

       Americans of today had their own Pearl Harbor twelve years ago – with almost the same number of dead (around 3,000). We responded by half-heartedly fighting futile wars which we announced in advance we didn't intend to win. In 1942, did Douglas MacArthur set a timetable for withdrawal from the Pacific?

       We have doggedly refused to identify the enemy (imagine Churchill announcing in 1940 that Nazism was an ideology of brotherhood and tolerance). Under Bush the Younger, we fought a war on terror while embracing its Middle Eastern roots. (Terror is a method anyway, not an ideology.) Even that's been downgraded. Today we deal with "man-caused disasters" through "overseas contingency operations."

       In the meantime, we twice elected an anti-American who spits on our traditions, tramples the Constitution, apologizes for our greatness and facilitates our enemies' rise to power. Obama is still smarting about the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt.

       In 1941, Americans were a proud, confident and resilient people. We took responsibility for our actions. We looked out for each other. Church attendance was high. Kids actually learned in school.

       In his book, "December 1941: 31 days That Changed America And Saved The World," Craig Shirley wrote that in the 1940s "a high-school diploma was a hard-earned document and those young Americans who received a diploma had language skills, writing skills, citizenship skills, geology, biology, physics, Latin, Greek and an expansive list of books to read."

       In the early ‘80s John Silber, then president of Boston University, said a high-school diploma signified that someone had been "institutionalized" for 4 years, and nothing more.

       Shirley also observed: "Chivalry and good manners reigned in American culture in 1941. Men held doors for ladies. Ladies acted like ladies. Men and women abided by the rules of courtship and life. It was the American way."

       Today, wherever you look, it's decay. We've gone from rearmament in 1941 to moral disarmament as the current order of the day.

       In November, a 14-year-old Danvers, Massachusetts student was indicted for the rape and murder of his math teacher, reportedly using a box cutter According to the Department of Education, in the 2009-2010 school-year, there were 1,183,700 violent crimes in America's citadels of scholarship, including murders, rapes, robberies and aggravated assault (with and without a weapon).

       According to one survey, in the 1940s, the top school discipline problems were: talking, chewing gum, making noise, running in the halls, getting out of turn in line (oh no! shocking), wearing improper clothing and not putting paper in wastepaper baskets. By the mid-80s, it was drug and alcohol abuse, suicide, rape, robbery and assault. Today the public-school perp-walk includes gangs, guns, sexting, drugs and all forms of violence.

       More than 40% of all births in the land-of-the-free are out-of-the-wedlock. According to a 2010 Time magazine survey, 39% believe marriage is now obsolete. More than a third of Americans think marriage is outdated, but liberalism's cause celebre is gay marriage.

       In a nation that pioneered the protection of human rights, there are one to two abortions every minute. Thanks to a low birthrate – in part fueled by a failure to form families – we won't have the manpower to fight future wars.

       By age 15, 25% of American males and 26% of females have engaged in sexual intercourse. Each year, 19 million new cases of STDs are diagnosed, half among 15 to 26 year-olds. In the United States, pornography is a $12-billion-a-year industry.

       Perhaps nothing symbolizes our descent more than the so-called knockout game, where black teens attack innocent bystanders (including the elderly) and try to knock them on the ground with one punch, while one of their cheering friends tapes the assault on a cell phone.

       The differences between 1941 and 2013 are best illustrated by comparison:

       • They had John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda. We have Matt Damon, Sean Penn and Jane Fonda.

       • They had John Ford and Frank Capra. We have Oliver Stone and Michael Moore.

       • They had Kate Smith singing "God Bless America." We have Lady Gaga singing "God Bless Transsexuals."

       • They had swing. We have rap.

       • They had Abbott and Costello and the Marx Brothers. We have Margaret Cho, Louis CK and Larry the Cable Guy.

       • They had "Gone with The Wind," "The Wizard of Oz," "How Green Was My Valley" and "Abe Lincoln in Illinois." We have "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" in 3-D, "Kick-Ass 2," "The Last Exorcism," "Nymphomaniac," and "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter."

       • They had books. We have 60-inch plasma TVs, cell phones and social media.

       • They had conversations. We Tweet.

       • They had "Remember Pearl Harbor." We have "Islam is the religion of peace."

       • They had "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition," "No atheists in the foxholes" and the Four Chaplains. We have the ACLU, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and "America isn't a Christian nation."

       • They had God, family and country. We have sensitivity, multiculturalism and inclusiveness.

       • They had the 4th. of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas. We have Kwanzaa, Ramadan and Cinco de Mayo.

       • They produced tons of consumer goods. We've outsourced production, while generating a mountain of debt – much of it owned by our enemies.

       • They had Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. We have a 312-lb, 6'5' offensive lineman who quit the Miami Dolphins because he was (poor baby!) harassed by a teammate, or so he says.

       • They had Winston Churchill, FDR, MacArthur, Ike and Patton. We have Obama and his toadies on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

       But some things never change. They had a pathetic man waiving a meaningless piece of paper saying there will be "peace in out time," with the savages of Germany. We have a pathetic man waiving a meaningless slip of paper telling us that he's guaranteed the savages of Iran won't have nuclear weapons – for the next six months, maybe.

Don Feder

       Okay, that's unfair. Whatever his failings, Neville Chamberlain loved his country.

Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer who is now a political/communications consultant. He also maintains his own website, DonFeder.com.

Jerry G reminds us that THIS is a great way to "jump start" your Christmas Mood this year!

This month's "LDL" (Let's do lunch) will be held on

Tuesday, December 10, 2013, 11:30 AM

at "Jimmies" in Mint Hill.

Help us spread word! Invite other classmates to come!
Even better, bring someone with you! Be sure YOU, come!

This link may help you find your way: 

Plan to join us. You'll be glad you did!

Editor's Note:  If a couple of you would PLEASE bring your camera along....and snap a few shots of the event...your humble webmaster would be very grateful!!  Us "out of towners" want to see our old buddies!  Please!  Email to: shephard@gmail.com
Generally speaking, it's best to email only ONE or TWO pics at a time. Otherwise it sometimes 'overloads" my email box.   -Ed

...and leave the driving to GOOGLE EARTH!

I did something yesterday, that we used to do all the time but don't do anymore: I went for a Sunday Drive!

And, since this is not 1950, but 2013...The Car and I stayed home.

We left the driving to... my computer, my mouse and Google Earth!

And I truly had the world at my fingertips!

So, of course my first stop was Charlotte, NC and the Sugar Creek Temple of higher learning.....to make sure someone from City Hall hadn't sent a wrecking crew in the dark of night to tear it down.

Central High

The Last House standing on Elizabeth Ave

A few clicks of the mouse and I traveled up Elizabeth Ave to discover that apparently this is the only one of those great old homes left standing between Presbyterian Hospital and Central High along Elizabeth Ave.

A little further up the Avenue I was pleased to see that the Visualite Theatre is still around...

Making a U turn and backtracking a bit there is "The Square" and to your left is where I remember watching with my Mom the construction of the new, modern KRESS dime store.  Her words still ring in my ears, "Son, one of these days, you'll be able to tell your children that you watched them build that store!"

I swung by a couple more wonders of the world, where I first met so many young kids who became

old friends.  Those are the same steps (below) shown in this classic photo.

Please note: The kid with the sailor cap is NOT the Cracker Jack Kid. It's me.



And........

Speaking of classic photos...Irv Edelman's 9th Grade home room

photo taken on this historic spot

Piedmont has changed a bit. It's now called an Open iB Middle School, whatever that is.

but the tunnel underneath the street it's on is still there, although decorated  a little. Piedmont just might be the only Junior High School in the country with its own tunnel. I would imagine that the powers that be thought twice about putting another one where Junior High Kids, would be shielded from adult supervision for who knows how long.

I "drove" up the street a ways wondering if that old pool hall and beer joint was still there. It wasn't, but there was a little street theatre going on.  There was a person taking a picture of two Moms dressed alike and two kids, dressed alike.

It's a photo.....LOOKING for a caption.  Feel free to submit yours.

So concludes my Sunday Drive thanks to Google Earth!

-Ed

Editor's Note:  Everytime I show that Edelman home room picture I brag about the fact that Janice Wilson (the last girl on the right, second row) is the famous Jan Karon the best selling author of the Mitford Series of stories. In one of his last letters to me, Coach Edelman mentioned how proud he was to have received one of her novels she had sent him autographed with glowing praise and appreciation of how much he had meant to her as a teacher that year at Piedmont. I heard a rumor that there's a new character who makes an appearance in her novel that's scheduled to hit the bookstores in the Fall named Edelman. Hummmmm?