August 10

77º here in Clarinda, IA at 10:30 am Monday, with predicted high of 83º. Think it rained Sunday morning and we did get .45" of rain Sunday morning. Humidity up, so A/C back on.

Spent time in Oskaloosa, IA at a Bluegrass Festival starting Thursday. Don't think there were over 40 or 50 people there, but some good music---and some other music.

Sunday we were able to attend a gathering of the Heuer clan at the shelter in the city park. Rusty had returned from Arlington, Washington for the weekend and all of his family in this part of Iowa, and his mother and her sisters were there.

Rusty with aunt Jan

Rusty with cousin Lori, & Aunts Jan & Joyce

House we have been watching being built

GROANER'S CORNER:((    The European Union commissioners have announced that an agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. 

    As part of the negotiations, the British government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five year phased plan for what will be known as EuroEnglish (Euro for short). 

     In the first year, "s" will be used instead of the soft "c". Sertainly, sivil servants will reseive this news with joy.  Also, the hard "c" will be replaced with "k". Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter.  

    There will be growing public enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replased by "f".  This will make words like "fotograf" 20 persent shorter.  

    In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the language is disgrasful, and they would go.  

    By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" by "z" and "w" by "v".  

    During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou", and similar changes vud, of kors, be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.  Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German lik zey vunted in ze forst plas.

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More later, Lynn