Brown Family Reunion

Matt had a good summer of baseball

My summer vacation, our house, and Josh's Wedding

After Scraping July 15, 2010

In preparation for Josh and Sara's wedding, which was held in our front yard, I embarked on a mission to paint our house. As you can tell from the photo (above) it needed it - even more than I knew. In the finished photo (below) it’s obvious that we have shutters. While standing on the ladder removing the shutters I sidestepped and ducked… twice. Somewhat unsafe but doable for a fifty plus year old man. Why did I do this? Experience! I knew from previous episodes that Bats would flee. Knowing it though still didn’t stop me from being surprised. The brown spot on the back of your pants kind of surprise. Their bat poo poo left an interesting stain on the house too. Great, I thought a stain on my house and my pants. Thank goodness for high pressure water sprayers. But that scare was nothing like my next one.

During their wedding I was sitting in the front row taking in the wonderful moment and incredible view of my son marrying the love of his life. And the house I raised in him in as the backdrop to the whole event. I briefly reminisced about things that happen in this yard with Josh. Things like catching a baseball with him, playing hide and seek, funny things Josh did and some I did to him. One time I gave him old cough syrup that had exceeded its expiration date. To make matters worse Sue had already, unknowingly to me, given him the correct medicine. Later that night after we were all asleep, Sue woke me up to tell me that she believed that someone was running around our house and was disturbed about it. You guessed it, I was shocked to look out our back door window to see Josh panting and sweating. He could not even explain how he got outside let alone why he was running around our house at 3am. But I kind of knew.

Two seconds later my thoughts turned to the dumbest thing I’ve done. And it occurred just weeks before. The roof that you can see in the photo doesn’t look that steep. I thought so too. If you enlarge the top photo and look at the top right of the roof our chimney top sits about 40 feet off the ground. It had never been painted and showed a hundred years of coal and dirt. Since this would have been somewhat noticeable during the wedding ceremony I decided to paint the backside of chimney. I placed our tallest ladder against our roof just to the right of the front porch. Josh joined me to help, just in case something bad might happen. I’m not completely dumb.

I crawled off the ladder onto the roof with a paint brush and caulking gun in one hand and my paint sprayer gun connected to a fifty foot hose filled with paint in the other. After painfully crawling half way up the roof I started to slide backwards. Josh’s concern was evident in his voice as he called to me come back. Well I was kind of falling back anyway and in one sense his request appealed to me but my other senses were screaming no. I can’t explain but to go backwards was to go blind. Due to the position of my body and slant of the roof I could not turn to see where I was going. I let my full body hug the roof and tried to shimmy up. It seemed that for every inch I was able to move up I slid back the same. I almost panicked. But, believe it or not, I remembered the counsel of my ninth grade health teacher telling us to never panic and keep your senses about you. I didn’t let myself panic but I felt a full fledged conundrum, a catch 22 situation. I couldn't go up and I can’t go back. I know I know you must be thinking that by now I must have discarded my three tools. Nope!

Ignoring Josh’s plea’s I used every bit of my strength and tugged, crept, and scratched inch by inch, with my tools and made it to the top.  I painted the chimney.  Physically shaking, exhausted, bearing burns and scrapes on my arms and legs from the shingles, but I did it. Dumb but alive and sitting watching my son… my son marry his love…my new daughter.  In some respects my trip up the roof was kind of like my years of parenting.  We do it without a net.  God is indeed good.

Brian Regan is the best!

Matt's 2010 Indiana High School Graduation

My view of the President's Health Care Take Over

Because I see this blog, in part, as a historic record for the Brown family, I thought it would be good to go on the record with my views on today’s incredible health care law.

What our President and this Congress has done concerning health care is revolutionary. It’s neither evolutionary nor just a simple adjustment. In fact it is not even a major adjustment; it is an about-face. No it’s not even that, it’s a change to the very foundation of our two hundred year old health care free market system. Our government has just taken control of over a fifth of our economy, made Insurance companies like utilities, and has forced individuals to buy a service at risk of inflated costs or severe penalties, including use of the IRS. It includes a unique use of terms to allow our government to do this. For example, though the IRS is involved the act does not "tax" us but instead "fines" us. Either way a penalty or cost is forced on working Americans. The only way to avoid a "cost" or "penalty" is to not work! That! Thanks to the new health care system is the only inexpensive way to get health care.

Hopefully those that have forced this incredible "Act" of law upon us are well intentioned, since it has some worthy goals. None less worthy than health care for all. However, whether well intentioned or not (does it really matter) I have no doubt that it is naive at its core and will likely hurt our nation. Since this is a fundamental change to our system, if it fails it will affect our very foundation.

Some might say, what’s the big deal? Let’s give it a try at least for a while. If it doesn't work then we repeal it. With all do respect this is a naive position. In the history of our nation we have never once repealed an entitlement. Not once! Ronald Reagan once said that the closes thing to eternal life in this world is a government program.

Medicare and Social Security are in dire need of a foundational change, not health care. Any young adult knows that Social Security won't be there for them without change; Warnings have been given to the "next generation" for years. Why is that? It's because these two entitlements can not survive on its own structure. It needs to change and now. It is irresponsible to ignore it and with each passing year the solution will become more painful to employ. That is obvious to me. It seems our politicians are either not interested in change (Republicans) or they want only to change the here and now without regard to future ramifications (Democrats). My guess is that congress will continue to "adjust" Medicare and Social Security until it falls under its own weight. And it will fall. When it falls it will have a devastating impact on our nation, just like a dam that unexpectedly caves under its own weight. My guess is that congress will continue to "adjust" Medicare and Social Security rather than address its core issues. I really think they got it backwards. We should "adjust" health care and revolutionarily change Social Security and Medicare.

I can't help but ask myself why congress would ignore these two entitlements but want very much to add Health Care as an entitlement. Perhaps it's control. As the saying goes, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Or, perhaps they really think it will make a difference. I sure don't. I have multiple reasons for this. Anyone would be sufficient in itself to justify this statement. But I will just use one.

Our nation has essentially been following the same free market health care system since its inception. Over the last half century or so we have added Insurance. This has made some adjustments to our health care process. But it did not change the fundamental principle of medical care. And, that is that everyone one is responsible for his own health care. Of course employers provided health care for their employees, but I believe that this evolved because of capitalism not the goodness of their hearts. That is employers had to provide it for competitive reasons. In other words it was free market driven.

The free market system creates a self leveling system. It's as much a law of the universe as the law of gravity. Nothing equalizes the economy as well. We have over two hundred years of history to prove this. We have the unparalleled success of America in the world to prove this. We have the failure or poor performance of every other economics system in the world in comparison to the free market to prove this. What drives the health care issue is that some people don't trust the employers or insurance companies as much as they do government. I don't understand why people would trust government more than any business, our forefathers certainly didn't, but I digress.

The fact is that we have the greatest health care that any man has ever had. Think about that for a minute. In all of history no one has had the kind of care that we experience today. The poorest people in our nation have far better health care than our grandparents had or even our parents.  And, America is one of the primary reasons the world has benefited from health care advances. This does not sound like a system that needs a revolutionary change. Adjustments are welcome. And, I know that if we can let the free market work everyone will benefit.

It seems so clear to me, but what do I know I'm just a common every day Dad.

Message about this blog

Within the next month I intend to write to this blog much more frequently. I will be including stories of relatives, funny and explanative stories about my family, and interesting pictures new, old, and very old. I have much to share about our interesting ancestry and historical events related to our family. When I pick a subject to blog about I will try to use it to bring different events both pass and present into the same story. I will also be including some personal thoughts on such things as politics, faith, sports, and made up stories for illustrative purposes. These would reflect the humble opinion of a common Dad, but I believe it is important if for that reason only.  Thank you for visiting my blog.

Don't mess with my daughters

Josh and Sara Engaged!

On Saturday, January 2, 2010 our son, Josh, proposed to Sara Dixon. Josh had arranged for the event to occur at an old school building in Squirrel Hill of Pittsburgh turned into a swing dance joint. It was there that Josh began to talk with Sara. He set up a table with dinner in the middle of the dance floor and as they walked in, pretending they were exploring the building, he swept her away with her favorite songs playing as they walked in. How romantic!! His mom taught him well! We wish them all of God's greatest blessings. We are so proud of Josh.
He is in his first year of law school and his fiance is a nursing student. There are no definite wedding plans as of yet. Congratulations Josh and Sara! We love you guys.