It was a question, do you remember where you were when you heard Kennedy was assassinated?
And for younger people, were you, when Kennedy was assassinated?
As we age the question will be, do you remember where you were when you heard of the Trade Center?
Etc.
Thinking of Ms. Whelan as one of a generation moving into NFL, NBA, and legislative ranks caused that thought trajectory, along with a quote from a blog a friend emailed to a circle of friends, "In the '60s we took drugs, LSD, to make the world seem weird. Now the world is weird and we take drugs, Prozac, to make it seem normal."
In the '60s there were klunky underpowered centalized punch-card computers and we had dreams. Now we have good computers, on a desktop and in a phone, strangely giving us little to dream of.
How many readers remember above-ground nuclear weapons testing? Sputnik?
Harry Truman was quoted as saying he was managing a mule team, plowing a field. He thought there must be something offering a better perspective than that. And he went into politics.
One has to recall that at the turn of the nineteenth century working animals and hand tools were far more common than internal combustion and electrified homes. Today, in Ramsey, there are few "horse people" who keep working animals while not working them, but as part of a legacy of which the young can little imagine while my generation knew of it mainly by word of mouth from the elders, who experienced it. GPS based upon atomic clocks in geosynchronous orbit is now common, and the height of mountains can be reckoned from GPS, with variance due to changing snow packs, but with the numbers in impressive agreement with indirect survey methods that predate present-day field survey teams using GPS and laser equipment to gain evidence in resolving boundary disputes between adjacent property owners. Boundary disputes are eternal, while sophistication of the appropriate dispute resolution technology evolves.
I recall an apartment building owner-client of the office in urban Seattle who wanted the office to get a court redefinition of his property bounds. A series of lots had been set by metes and bounds defined from a west marker, while other lots were set from an east survey marker, with his lot and the neighboring lot sharing the "boundary" between the two series of lots. The land owners did not contest the actual boundary set by use. The client had his land's legal description changed via the west boundary set from the west marker and the east set from the east marker. The neighbor's legal description remained unchanged while the client obtained good title to what was about a fifteen foot strip of land, I believe the term is "a surveyor's hair," which had not been assigned to either property but physically existed because the original reckoned distance between the two markers was wrongly reckoned early on, in error by fifteen feet.
I recall once purchasing a map from the county surveyor's office, and an employee then serving the desk talking about how inexact some survey markers can be, his recollection being about one legal description citing something as a marker such as "the Buick axle planted at the edge of the woods, marking the corner between fields" or such.
And then there are questions of easements, what to make of them as land uses change, whether there was neglect to record easement documents allowing dispute involving good faith purchasers without notice, things of that sort, rights of entry for ditch or utility line maintenance, especially easements at property boundaries or access easements from roadways to lake front, a host of ways neighbors can fight one another over land issues, or owners can fight outsiders' claims of specific entry and use rights.
Ms. Whelan now is in the legislature and Mr. Jungbauer no longer is there, and if I recall things correctly that were published on the web, at one point Ms. Whelan while at the U. worked extensively on a Jungbauer campaign.
Without looking it up, how many readers know what "GPS" stands for? I was close, with "Global Positioning Satellites" being my recollection.
__________UPDATE__________
A pair of nostalgia questions. What is William Westmoreland's place in history, and what federal agency did he head that was scorned by many in the nation (hint, not NSA, CIA, nor IRS)? What Warren Commission member's highest elective achievement was being reelected often to Congress from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and what was the highest public office he held?
_________FURTHER UPDATE__________
I was wrong. GPS satallites are not geosynchronous. This link. Next launch countdown clock - same link.