The RIP Thread...

My helper last summer is now an Assistant Captain on this crew in Az. Thankfully I spoke with him this morning. RIP
 
There's a reason brave men take on these jobs. They have the heart and guts to stare death in the eyes for the good of others. May they rest in peace and my thoughts are with their families and friends who are suffering right now.
 
Apparently one of the locals gave the group a warning that it was a highly dangerous area, beyond what would be the normal dangers.
 
Jay that is the difference between Hotshots and regular people. We went to the dangerous part of the fires. That was our job.
 
Dennis Farina, 69 ... RIP

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Photo credit: ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images
 
Dennis Farina could deliver the F-bomb better than almost any actor:
:lol:
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/SZrhuxxbiK4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
JJ Cale

J.J. Cale
Singer-songwriter
John Weldon Cale, also known as JJ Cale or J.J. Cale, was a Grammy Award-winning American singer-songwriter and musician. Cale was one of the originators of the Tulsa Sound, a loose genre drawing on blues, rockabilly, country, and jazz influences. Wikipedia
Born: December 5, 1938, Oklahoma City, OK
Died: July 26, 2013


https://www.google.com/search?q=jj+...u&sa=X&ei=FED0UerTH4Wj4AOa4oGQBw&ved=0CCwQqAI
 
Too bad, I really liked his sound. There is a good documentary at youtube of one of his tours.... He liked to keep his voice low key understated with the music, he preferred it that way.Not big on showing himself off, let the music do the talking. Kind of unusual in that regard. Nice guy, his friends that he played with liked to say.
 
Gigi, check out that link that Bud posted. Lots of great JJ songs that I have never heard. No slouch on the guitar, a solid musician no doubt about it.
 
Goodbye Auld Man

Not to wish anyone dead before their time, but I said goodbye to a mentor and a great tree man today.
He is in hospice and has only hours to days left in this sphere. Attaining 90 years of age is a worthy time on this earth and Mac's many accomplishments show that he took his time here seriously.

Maclean was born and raised in Ullapool, Scotland. He obtained his Forestry Degree at the University of Edinburgh.
After serving in World War II he emigrated to the US where he and his sweetheart, Meg raised three daughters: Catriona, Rowena, and Dierdre.
Meg taught school, and Maclean ran a full-service Tree and Landscape Company.

Never losing their Gaelic roots, he started the Delaware Highland Games in this area. A few years ago we shared his box seats with he and his family as he was honored upon the occasion of his retirement at the 50th Delaware Highland Games. Maclean was known worldwide in bagpiping circles, and often in Autumn he returned to Scotland for piping competitions. A stickler for detail and authenticity, I understand he annoyed some upstart New World Scots in North Carolina by insisting they bring valid bagpiping judges all the way from Scotland for their piping competitions.

Upon his retirement from the tree industry back in the late 1980s, he bequeathed to me his sizable arborist library dating back to his school days in the 1940s.
He gave many tree men in this area their start and always had an arboreal quiz for me whenever I saw him. ( Mind me lad, what might be that tree over on the corner of Beverly Road and Manns Avenue, and why is it failing so?)
My wife Karen has been his eldest daughter Catriona's best friend for years. Our children and his grandchildren grew up together.

This morning I saw visiting friends from Illinois off on their way and then went to see Mac.
I stopped on my way out the driveway and picked up the tip of an oak branch that a squirrel had cut off and dropped while making its nest for the upcoming winter.

When I arrived I said, "Hi Mac! How's the Auld Man?" in my best Scottish brogue. He momentarily opened his eyes and gave me a huge smile.
I continued, "You've probably been hearing from pipers from all over the world?" to which he nodded yes.
I then asked, "Have you been hearing from many tree workers?" to which he shook his head no.

I placed the oak twig with four leaves and an acorn attached into his hand and he again smiled and turned it around in his hand, feeling the twig and the leaves and the smoothness of the acorn.

As he held the twig I said, "Even the mighty oak eventually succumbs to the forces of nature, and yet it also spreads wide its acorns. All we have to do is to look at your children, and your grandchildren, and all the tree folks you have touched to see how far you have spread your acorns". I then named all of the tree folks that I knew he had worked with and solemnly thanked him for all that he had done for all of us.

In your life there are bosses, role models, and mentors. Maclean was and ever will be my notion of an excellent mentor; a tough act to follow; a man of intense integrity whose life drives me to aspire to a very high standard of behavior. When I am faced with a decision about a tree I will ask myself what Mac would do.

When my wife and I bicycled around Scotland in 1988 we stopped in Ullapool to see the community which had raised such a man. A man with an intense passion for trees, family, bagpiping, all things Scottish, and oh, I must not forget, "whiskey".

Meg was a patient back when I was working as a hospice nurse, and when she was dying Karen took a large box of Whitman's chocolates and sat with Catriona until the box was empty. (Therapy they claimed!)
Karen has a box of Whitman's chocolates in her car, at the ready.

Cherish those in your life who help to make you who you are...

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