Author: marionvermazen

I am a traveler, hiker, avid reader, Sun alumnus, computer geek, Spanish and French language student, knitter and genealogist. I am retired after working for almost 30 years in the Computer Industry. I live in Reno, Nevada with my husband Duke.

Where I Blog

Ronni Bennett of the Time Goes By Blog recently started a feature on her blog with pictures of where other Elder Bloggers blog. It is aptly titled Where Elders Blog. I just sent my picture of my blogging space to Ronni. I am sure she will post it soon.

If you don’t want to go to her page I thought I would also include the picture here.

As you walk in the front door of our house the office is to your right. This picture is taken from the front door entry way. Duke’s desk is on the opposite wall of the office from mine. We have only lived in our house for three months so I am still getting organized.

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And here is a picture of our house. The white stuff is snow.

I think I will do a future posting with pictures of our neighborhood and what it is like to live in a Del Webb community. Does anyone have any questions they would like answered or anything I should include?

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Presidential Courage by Michael Beschloss

I just finished reading Presidential Courage by Michael Beschloss. Before reading the book I thought it was just about Wahington, Lincoln, Truman and Reagan, the four presidents on the back cover. It turns out however that the book is also about the courage of Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and John Adams.

Beschloss doesn’t paint these Presidents as one sided heroes. He tells of their strugles and wrong turns and their courgeous acts. It made me optimistic about our country to read about presidents who did the right thing in spite of incredible opposition. Andrew Jackson took on the Bank of the United States which history shows was lending money and thus influencing many elected leaders. Republican Teddy Roosevelt took on trusts that thought they owned the government and especially the Republican party. Ronald Reagan made peace with the Soviets alienating much of the right wing of his party.

As I read Presidential Courage I was intrigued to realize that a President sticking to an unpopular policy could and probably would find validation in this book. He would define what he was doing as presidential courage. Of course if history shows the policy to be bad for the country The president will probably not be remembered as courageous.I wonder is courage is something that only can be measured in the full disclosure of history?

Presidnetial Courage is an interesting, thought provoking and readable book. I recommend it.

Hobart Reservoir Hike

Yesterday the Sierra Canyon hiking group was just four of us (Dave, Sherry, Merle and me). We did a very strenuous hike to Hobart Reservoir from the east. To get to the trail head from Carson City we went west on Ash Canyon Road turned left on Winnie then right on Wellington. The jeep road which head up the mountain is an unmarked left turn between the beautiful houses along Wellington.

We headed up the very narrow dirt road for two or three miles.  I was glad that Dave was a good driver. He went very slowly and his Jeep Cherokee did fine. When we found a wide part of the road we decided to stop and walk. We were at 6000 ft. We hiked up the road for a couple of miles and finally reached the crest at 7,904 feet. The climb was steep and hard. It turned out that we could have driven all the way up. We would have had to move this tree off the road

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but otherwise the road was passable. As you can see the road up goes through a lot of trees that were burned by a forest fire a few years ago. Here is the parking area at the top.

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From here we hikes down a mile or two and dropped 400 feet to Hobart Reservoir where we had lunch.

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We hiked further down the creek that goes out of the reservoir and then headed back to the car. All of my pictures are here on Flickr.

Free Brand new Book – Does anyone read my Blog?

In my blog posting on Sept 29 I offered to send a free copy of the new book Lincoln: The Presidential Archives to the first person who posted a comment on the blog and sent me their address. (The offer is still good.)Since no one has taken me up  on the offer I must assume that no one wants the book or no one reads my blog. I get a few comments on my blog so I know that it sometimes gets read. I think this illustrates what I have suspected for a while. Most people probably read blogs by searching. For example Richard Bernstein the author of The book Thomas Jefferson recently commented on the blog post I did for his book. Undoubtedly he found the post by searching on his name. I was very excited to get his feedback and in a sense make an acquaintance with him.

I regularly read blogs by using the Google blog reader but I suspect no one else regularly reads my blog. This bothered me for a while but I then I reminded myself that I blog because I like to. Comments welcome.

Sierra Canyon Monday Hike

It was REALLY hard to get up today for hiking after our Mount Rose hike yesterday. I was very glad that we decided to to do an easy local hike. We hiked around Anderson Park and Bartley Ranch Park both in South Reno. The sky was full of interesting clouds. It was threatening rain but it held off. The views from the bluff overlooking Reno were punctuated with rain in the distance. I enjoyed myself and we probably walked a mile or two with a few hills to get the heart pumping. We stopped at Starbucks for coffee on the way home and we still got home in time for lunch. Another great hike.

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