This weekend thousands of bloggers are remembering 9/11 in a very special way. I am one of them. I volunteered heartily and thankfully to honor one of our 9/11 fallen. Some were hero’s doing their jobs as policemen and firemen. Some were ordinary people who did heroic things to save others. Some were caught in the firestorm by being in the right place at the wrong time; such as just reporting to work that day or by being a innocent passenger on a plane.

My honoree was just such a person. She had gotten up that morning to head out on a vacation to Palm Springs, Florida with her long time boyfriend Donald DiTullio. It should have been a happy day for them both, but it turned out to be the worst because Janis and Donald were on Flight 11 that crashed into the WTC North Tower.

Janis was a caring and giving person. She had three dogs and she loved them as if they were her own children. She even went so far as to include them (Shiloh, Sasha and Jessie) and their care into her will. She had no children of her own.

Janis was was also a line dancer according to her friends. Dancing was something that she enjoyed at the local Moose Lodge in Salem, MA. In fact she met Donald at a country and western dance.

In her spare time, she volunteered in soup kitchens during the Holidays. Janis was also very creative and let her juices flow on such things as photography, collages, quilting, sewing and gardening. She was also very adept on the computer and helped others create web pages.

Janis got her schooling at University College, in Peabody, Massachusetts. First she earned a bachelor’s in information technology and then her MBA. She had worked for 28 years as a product testing team leader for General Electric at the Lynn Plant.

Janis was a person that I would have liked to have known. There is much in common with this beautiful soul that lived so far away from Georgia in Massachusetts. She left behind a much loved sister and niece that I know miss her very much.

Linda, I hope I did your sister proud on this tribute. It just seems that words are not enough.

Natalie Janis LasdenFor a complete list of participants and their honorees, please click the image below.

April 19, 1955 to September 11, 2001

My children. Family. Friends. Sunny days that I can ride. My health. Music. Conversations. Rainy days that I can go walking in. Any child’s laughter. Surprises (giving and receiving). Sunshine on a cold day. Swimming on a hot day. Books. Literacy. Freedom to be myself. Mutual respect and understanding. My own bathroom. Not carrying a rifle or a pistol everywhere. Freedom to worship (or not) as I choose. Hockey. Riding in weather and folks thinking I’m crazy. Football. Dew on the grass in the morning sun. Talking with my mother.

Knowing that I brought all of my men home with me…

[added 28 November] For those of you that know me, I bet you almost expected this; for those of you that don’t, do you know where it comes from? Daffodils, green meadows, skies full of stars, raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles, warm woolen mittens, brown paper packages tied up with strings, cream colored ponies, crisp apple strudels, doorbells, sleigh bells, schnitzel with noodles, wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings, girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes, snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes, silver white winters that melt into springs.

These are some of the things that I am thankful for…

Carlo

Well, I have returned from Iraq and my leave, and I got my internet up and running. Now I am able to surf the web and see who is saying what and how everyone is doing. I am also able to let you know all of the above about me. So, let me start this off by saying, “Thank you!” to everyone for your prayers and thoughts and worry and all while I was gone. I appreciate it, and I know that there are a lot of folks out there that have others that are in harm’s way, so remember them, too, please.

Now that I am back, everything seems to be speeding up, again. You see, I haven’t had time to sit down and contemplate the way that I normally do. I can’t take a lot of time with this particular post because I have to be on Ft Sill in about 30 minutes to welcome a unit back from Iraq. Yes, I am STILL deeply involved with the Patriot Guard. Check them out, if you decide to meet some, you will see that they are great folks…

Take care,

Carlo

All kinds of good news… and things to be thankful for.

First: My internet is back up. Yay!!

Second: Raven has been given the all clear and is officially in remission. Thanks to all of you that had her in your prayers and specially to those that helped get her on their prayer lists. It helped more than you could know.

Third: For the first time ever… I now have cable TV in my house. LOL (Just thought I would toss that in there cuz I am thankful. grin)

Fourth: All of you who have stuck it out with us for the years we have been posting here will be happy to know that, God willing and the creek don’t rise, Carlo will be back in the states within the nest couple of weeks. He is very busy training the new guys that took over for his unit and has not had time to post, or chat much for that matter… but I do know that he may be home before Labor Day. I can’t express in words how this makes me feel. Relieved, ecstatic, goose-bumpy all over, and the smiles have been many since he finally gave the word. It has been a long tough year for him and the many who call him friend. Thank you Lord – now just get him home safe and we will all be grateful.

Thats it for now… more to come later. I need to go smile and watch some food network.

my mothers loving handiwork that she created for my birthday this year. She made every piece and I am so proud of it all! I cannot express to her how much I love her and this project she did for me. I know what it took out of her and the amount of time she put into it. When we finally get together again in person there will be tons of hugs!!!

There is the quilt itself, shams, pillow cases, a body pillow case (plus an extra one) and matching curtains all in animal prints! Meeeowwwwrrrr

My PC is back. A huge thank you goes out to my PC geeks (said ever so lovingly) over at Power PC in Marietta, GA. They are the best at what they do. They are fair, reasonably priced and they won’t scam you by telling you they have to fix something that is not broken. I heart you guys!

Now on to the rant! I don’t know if you remember I was have major problems about 2 months ago. My hard drive was too small for todays programming. I was trying to run my pc on a 16 gig HD and I had unknowingly picked up a virus that had eaten up what little free space I had left… well.. that led to windows crashing. My HD was over 6 years old and on its last legs. (They don’t last forever folks )

I found what I had thought was a great deal on a new HD over at TigerDirect.com and purchased a 40 gig. When it came in I took my pc over to to another friend who managed to recover all my data on the old HD’s very last boot up… it died during the operation. I was thrilled! That thrill was short lived…

My troubles continued to occur with blue screens of death, no video inputs and freezing window panes on the new drive. Painstaking efforts were employed to figure out what the problem was. I scanned for viruses over at housecall. (Trend Micro) One was detected in my registry. I bought a registry cleaner, but the problems continued. This version of windows did not come with Disk Doctor, so I bought one and still the problems continued.

Next I noticed that my PCCillin was not working correctly and when it did, it would freeze or cause my PC to reboot itself. I shut it down and took a chance on Windows Defender to help keep me virus free. It did to a point but even that was clogging my PC’s arteries, so that also had to be shut down. All of these things took place over a period of two months. Some days my PC would not boot up at all. Some days it ran like a champ… some it was just slower than dirt. I found a great tool to help speed up my PC. It is called WinXcellerator. It helped to speed up my PC by freeing up my RAM.

We finally removed PCCillin completely off the computer and suddenly we had a faster computer, but still had the occasional mysterious self reboots, and no video imputs. I was figuring at this point that a virus was still attached to my registry or that my mother board was giving up the ghost as well. I broke down and took it last Thursday to my repair guys and prepared for the worst.

I received a call from them first thing Friday morning. Your HD crashed our system upon boot up. Good news: Your MB is fine, all parts are in great shape. Bad news: Your HD is bad. It has bad sectors and we don’t know if we can get all your data.

Me: “But, but that is impossible! I just bought it less than two months ago and it was new!”

Them: “Nope, your HD is bad and we will do our best to retrieve your data.”

Me: “Sigh, OK.”

It turns out that The “New” HD I bought was apparently refurbished. I am totally never buying anything, ever again, from TigerDirect.com. I am recommending that my friends never buy anything from them either. I was scammed and what truly pisses me off is that it only had a 30 day manufacturer’s warranty and I can do nothing about getting my few and far between extra bucks back. I will never buy anything made by Seagate again either.

My buds over at Power PC put in a new Western Digital 80 gig, managed to recover my data and I am now operating at normal speeds with no blue screens of death. It also turns out that I was correct to uninstall PCCillin. The guys told me that they have had 7 customers bring in their PCs with the same problems: blue screens and freezing PC’s. It was all traced back to PCCillin. It does not work correctly with Windows XP. They also told me that Norton is a resource hog and will slow down windows, but at least it will not crash XP.

I chose to go a different route. I have been using a free but very effective firewall called Zone Alarm. I checked them out and it turns out that they have a complete internet security program that is very affordable. I have been running it now for almost 24 hours and it has not caused the first problem, has caught it’s first trojan virus (myspace is full of them), and it does not slow down my system. It has self learning software that reads what sites you go to often and places them in catagories of safe or not safe. It warns you that it is blocking pop ups and spyware as you surf, so you can learn as well. I am totally pleased with it. You can try it free for 15 days as a trial and it is the complete package. At least you have time to find out if it will cause you problems.

Well, this was not a small rant… but I think I got my point across.

Hope your weekends are truly wonderful!

I have to say a big “Thank You” to everyone who commented on my “Let’s admit America gets the celebrities we deserve” post. I went on a rant and (it seems) that I struck a nerve. I appreciate that I am not alone in despising the way the media behaves.

I also appreciate the support for me as a soldier and, by extension, for all the other military people. We do a job that, in my mind is thankless. We do that job out of most people’s sight, and we don’t expect to get any kind of appreciation. I have been brought to tears by people simply telling me, “Thank you for your service,” and that is why I often say that people should say thank you to a veteran or a military member. I would like to include the veteran’s or member’s family, as well, because they sacrifice as much, or more, than the member.

Once again, thank you for your insightful comments and for your support. I greatly appreciate both.

Carlo

Was spent doing something that I wish I could do more often. Don’t get me wrong here, I wish that no more soldiers had to die protecting our freedoms. Yet, this is a fact of life anytime there is a war. What I wish I could do more often is honor those soldiers who paid the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

Many have said, “I am sorry you had to spend your birthday at a funeral”. I am not sorry, what-so-ever. I just wish that all of you could have been there with me so you could understand why spending my day this way was what I wanted needed to do. I will humbly try to put this into words instead so you might get an inkling of what I and all the others that were with me felt yesterday.

It started with my alarm clock. Instead of the usual groan and hitting the snooze, I instantly got up with a smile and a sense of purpose. That in itself is quite the rarity these days.

A sense of purpose.

A need to be somewhere for someone else. A need to show his family that I cared that he made the ultimate sacrifice for his country. I was going to honor this fallen hero who paid the price of his life for our freedoms.

We arrived at the first staging area at 7:20 am and filled my tank, cleaned windows and then parked my cage (Jeep) to wait on more to arrive. We chatted with several of the vets and mentors. We met vets who served in many wars and one who is current active duty.

It was kick stands up at 7:45 and the roar of approximately 10 motorcycles filled the air with their familiar rumble. They pulled out ahead of us and we followed right behind them. Two buildings over another 20 followed out right behind us. We drove to the main staging area in Canton, GA to see many others already there ahead of us. They were already parked in two rows, side by side, in anticipation of KSU at 8:30, but that time was a while off still.

We chatted with more Vets and made more instant friends. Somewhere in the sea of motorcycles sitting 2 by 2 was a man that lives directly behind us in our very own neighborhood. We watched in awe at the amount of people there to honor this man who had passed on protecting us. More and more groups and individuals arrived to add to the well organized mayhem of motorcycles and people. The local sheriff and police departments arrived to escort us to the funeral home.

At 8am the newbies were mentored in what was expected of them during the day. There were approximately 30 new riders there on their first missions.

My first tears fell when the crowd was asked if any were Vietnam Vets. Many raised their hands. They were given a round of applause. They were then asked if any were not given a proper welcome home. several raised their hands again. Their hands were shaken and/or hugs were given, applause rang and they were properly thanked for their service.

My second sniffles occurred when we were attending the final instructions meeting and the wife of the fallen soldier arrived to personally thank us for coming to honor her husband. There was not a dry eye in the crowd. She thanked us… but it was we who were thanking her as we were honored to be there.

KSU at approximately 8:45am. Now it wasn’t just a roar of engines but the ground trembled with the thunder of motorcycles. It was amazing to be amongst so many past and present service men and women. As we pulled out of the staging area I saw people standing on the side of the road with flags. Cars were stopped to let us pass on both sides of the road.

We arrived at the funeral home at approx 9 or 9:30am. We all gathered our flags and found places in the flag line in front of the funeral home. By this time – time was of no consequence. It no longer mattered. We were all there with that same sense of purpose. There were all faiths, races, and genders in that flag line, all with the same purpose. Flags straight up, backs straight and emotions put to to the back of our minds.

When the time came and the doors opened, we gathered close to protect the family and casket from photographers. The Army honor guard placed Sgt. Ardron in the hearse with honor and care. We then quickly broke lines and folded our flags to join the procession to the grave site.

Now is where my words might fail me… because I don’t honestly know if I can describe the next moments properly. I shall try.

It was one of the most emotional stretches of 6 to 10 miles I have ever driven in my life. From the funeral home to the cemetery there were citizens lining every road, holding flags, saluting or holding their hands over their hearts. As we passed over the expressway, the fire department had two trucks, one on each side, and their ladder booms were crossed over the roadway with a flag held between them. I even noticed cars beneath us on the expressway pulling over to show their respect.

We drove through 4 towns and the cars were stopped the entire route. Some holding flags out their windows. Others standing out of their cars to show their respect. I have never seen such a beautiful sight of red, white and blue. There must have been a thousand or more people along the roadside. Our procession was more than a mile long.

There were hand written signs thanking the vets for their service. There was a Mexican family proudly holding up a red, white and blue quilt between them. There was the daddy and his little boy holding his flag high. The African-American family that held a huge flag up in their front yard. Veterans in their uniforms saluting as we drove past. The elderly couple that stood just a bit straighter as we filed by them. Boys scouts standing all in a row with their flag poles. The trucker in his big rig giving the thumbs up.

Race and religion – they no longer mattered. There was one singular purpose. A grateful people on a small speck of this great country we live in turned out by the hundreds to say Thank You.

My husband, whom I have only seen cry once, was sniffling because he could no longer contain his emotions. His comment of “If only this soldier could see this” did me in. He did see it, but I knew what he meant.

We arrived to the cemetery, parked and once again gathered our flags. We once again formed a flag line and were thanked by the family for doing this for them more times than I can count. It was a honor and a privilege to to be there for them and for Sgt. Ardron. The honor guard placed Sgt. Ardron on his final resting place. We were invited to move in closer and we did. The 21 gun salute was made, taps rang out and prayers were said. It was a moving experience that will be forever etched in my mind.

Final count from the day was: 102 motorcycles and 7 cages. Quite a turnout, wouldn’t you say?

Just so you know, I did have some fun yesterday. I was treated to dinner and marguarita’s by my step-daughter. It was a wonderful end to a wonderful day. It was a day I would and will repeat as many times as necessary until each and every one of our soldiers come home.

Yes, we are all truly blessed to live in a country where we can put aside our differences to honor a soldier that gave his all so that others can be free.

If you want to know how you too can honor our fallen heros, then click the link to the Patriot Guard and sign up. It is free to join and it will cost you nothing but a little of your time to ride with them to do what I did yesterday. You don’t have to have a motorcycle to join and the time you spend honoring our fallen will be something you will never regret. The link to join is right at the top of the home page, followed by the PGR mission statement. Take the time… it is a feel good thing to do.

This summer is my 20th reunion, and, just like all the others, I won’t be able to attend. The irony is that I have been outside the country for every one, and I wanted to attend all of them. The question is, why? I know that I would love to see the people, but is it for selfish reasons or am I really interested in how they have been over the last twenty years? Do I want to gloat over the things that I have learned about life, or do I really care about how well my ex-girlfriend and her husband and kids have been?

I also wonder what their idea of me is, and how much different I am from their image. In other words, how much of me can they take, when I know that I am so different from what I was and what they expect. You see, my changes have been drastic, and I really don’t know how others could deal with them. I think that Linkin Park wrote it best,

“One thing, I don’t know why,
It doesn’t even matter how hard you try.
Keep that in mind I designed this rhyme,
To remind myself how I tried so hard,
In spite of the way you were mocking me,
Acting like I was part of your property,
Remembering all the times you fought with me.
I’m surprised it got so far…
Things aren’t the way they were before,
You wouldn’t even recognize me any more.
Not that you knew me back then,
But it all comes back to me in the end.
You kept everything inside,
And though I tried, it all fell apart.
What it meant to me will eventually be a memory,
Of a time when I tried so hard.”

Finally, I have to say that I feel new again. I have (as you can tell from the last eighteen or twenty months reading) had a number of issues to deal with. Ironically, I deal with them best when I deal with them alone, however, support is always welcome, and I must say that I appreciate this forum in which to vent. I also know that there are people that will disagree with my opinions, but still support me in my troubles, and I thank you for that.

Since I feel new again; reborn, as it were, I have to say that I could use the first and last stanzas that I wrote for Phoenix herself aimed directly at me, but, instead, I will simply say that, Phoenix, my dear, we have come full circle. Your poetry inspired a response from me, now that very response applies to ME. That being said, I have decided that I will remind myself that, no matter what anyone throws at me, I can, and will, rise from the ashes. Therefore, I have been inspired by my ex-wife, no less, as to what my next tattoo will be. It is a tribal phoenix designed to remind me that I can survive, no matter what.

Thank you all for your patience and understanding.

Carlo

Because you sacrificed… we have a Constitution and Declaration of Independence and are free from the governing hand of another country.

Because you sacrificed… we have one union under God, instead of a divided nation.

Because you sacrificed… we have survivors of Hitlers massacres and a free Europe.

Because you sacrificed… there is democracy in countries it would have seemed impossible before.

Because you sacrificed… people booed your return from a non-winnable “conflict” and burned the flag in protest. Yet, you stand proud and remember your brothers in arms today, as it should be and should have been then.

Because you sacrifice… we have religious fanatics protesting at funerals and homecomings. Yet, you stand together against them in peaceful harmony so families can mourn in peace.

Because you sacrifice… oppressed people far away from these shores can vote for their own leaders.

Because you sacrifice… I will remember your valor, honor, determination and strong desire to keep us a free country under the toughest odds.

Because you sacrifice… I will keep you all in my prayers to come home to your families that love and miss you.

Because you sacrifice… I will honor the memories of those who have gone before you fighting for our freedoms that some take for granted.

Because you sacrifice… I thank you for all that you are, all that you do and all that you stand for.

To all Veterans far and wide and to those men and women that are still fighting the good fight, Thank you.