I had a grand birthday, lots of phone calls, e-mails and cards. Thanks!

Our children sent me a wonderful gift: inside a beautiful card was a gift certificate to the Chanhassan Dinner Theatres! That will be so much fun to attend! I really look forward to using the gift and, hopefully, Beaver will be able to make time to come along with me ... as there is enough for two. It's set up for me to make my own time and play selection. I'd like to send one more thank you to Chris, Jessy, Weston, Coni, Wyatt, Jolene, Brooklynn, Rylie, Lori, Shawn, Caity and Jayce! Awesome gift!

My day didn't end there, though; we had a beautiful evening out, treated to a birthday dinner by Russ and Barb Dewey. We were intending on going to The Peak, but when we got there it was closed. Gave us an opportunity to try a new location, Thumper Pond, near Ottertail lake. It's a new hotel, golf, restaurant combination ... has a "lodge" look, with lots of wood. Very clean, nice atmosphere. We had a delightful waiter and delicious food. I even had a free white chocolate dessert that was incredible! I would most definitely go back another time. So, needless to say, it was a hit with me! Thanks, yet again, to the Deweys!

When I was in the marvelous Barnes & Noble Store in Rochester last fall, I saw a book that really struck my fancy: Marley & Me by John Grogan. I decided to save money and get it from the library. Well, my name is still on the list, so far down that I had given up hope of ever getting to read it.

Well, what you need in this kind of situation is a friend who can read your mind when she is shopping for a birthday present for you. When I opened the gift from Barb, there it was -- the book I had passed up (and regretted) -- Marley & Me. It says it is the story of life and love with the world's worst dog. (How can he be -- looking as innocent as he does on the cover?) ... Thanks, Barb.

A very special thank you to Peggy, for offering to watch the kids for us, so we could spend a nice time with just adult conversation ... that's a treat!

I was also sent an offer from Bridget to go out, so will look forward to that time out with her -- thanks, Bridget!

Tomorrow evening, plans are to meet several people for another meal out, so I'll get back to you on that next week!

The ranch manager, my boss, I will now call "Jack."

The ranch manager's son, also my boss, I will now call "Junior."

These are not their real names.

Sheep Dog Trials
by Larry Dake

Sherry looked out our front window to see the sheep all bunched up into a milling mass of wool.

Then she saw the dogs, circling and nipping at their flanks!

My dog, Checker, and I were away in my pickup, putting out sheep supplement pellets. The large, green pellets were dumped from fifty pound bags onto the ground as I drove across the field. The sheep herders, Esteban and Domingo, were in the back, opening and dumping the bags as we went.

Esteban had two dogs. Pepper, an older Border Collie with a freckled nose, and Teto, a brother to Checker. Teto was a serious dog with a Border Collie headache; a dog so intent on herding sheep that everything else, and everyone else, man or beast, scarcely got through to his brain. When he wasn't herding sheep, he looked like he had a migraine. Esteban had left Pepper and Teto safely tied under his sheep camp trailer when we went to the field.

Domingo, unfortunately, had left his five dogs untied. They were Oscar, Rosy, Clover, Sassy, and a fifth dog, a small black mutt.

Oscar, also a mutt, was a friendly brown farm dog with black highlights. He had little value as a sheep dog but was a valued companion to Domingo.

Rosy, a black-and-white Border Collie, actually belonged to the ranch. She was meek and had little zest.

Clover, Domingo's other Border Collie, was a better herding dog.

Sassy was a litter mate to Checker and Teto. Sassy showed a lot of good potential as a sheep dog. She had good "cast," that is, she would by nature run out around the flock and approach from opposite the shepherd -- a highly desirable trait. As her name relates, she had a likeable, sassy attitude similar to Checker's. (I had tried to buy Sassy from Domingo, but he let it be known that he wouldn't part with her for any kind of money!)

Sherry could see from the house that there were unattended dogs in the sheep, and that they had the sheep knotted into a tightening ball!

She picked up the microphone from the two-way radio on the counter.

"There are dogs in the sheep!" she said. "Larry, Esteban and Domingo are gone."

Jack, the ranch manager, answered immediately, "Thank you, Sherry. Dale, do you copy?"

Dale, one of the cowboys working nearby at the cattle feedlot that day, answered from his pickup, "Yes, Jack, I copy."

"Go over there and lock those dogs in the commissary!"

"I'm on my way," Dale answered.

"Thank you."

Then Jack radioed for his son, Junior. Junior was in his pickup, forty miles away, headed for town.

"Junior, do you copy?"

"Yes, I'm here."

"Go over there and shoot every one of those dogs!"

There was a long silence, then junior answered, "Okay."

"Thank you," said Jack.

"Thank you," answered Junior.

Sherry slipped on her jacket and ran out to the sheep camps to see if Refugio was in his camper. He was home, and another one of the Mexican cowboys was visiting with him. Sherry and the cowboys had the dogs out of the sheep by the time Dale arrived.

Dale locked them all in Domingo's commissary wagon. When Domingo, Esteban, and I arrived back at sheep headquarters, we could hear the dogs barking wildly. We had no idea what had just transpired.

Dale walked over to our truck and explained, "Domingo's dogs were in the sheep ... Junior's on his way over to shoot them."

I was shocked. Domingo bristled and he and Esteban launched into an emphatic tirade in Spanish.

I couldn't bear to watch five dogs get shot -- especially Sassy, so in short order I remembered a fence project I needed to finish up on the other side of the lambing shed. I stopped at the house and told Sherry to keep the kids inside. Then I drove up behind the shed, with Checker sitting on the seat beside me. When I got to the project, I shut Checker safely in the cab, with the windows cracked slightly.

I was mending on the fence, when I heard Junior's pickup speed into the yard below and brake suddenly, gravel flying. He came to a stop in front of Domingo's commissary wagon, which was out of my sight.

My gut wrenched, as I waited for the first shot.

At times like this, not having a two-way radio in my truck was a blessing. I could just fade away -- and hide!

Tension was building up steam as I listened.

When I was a kid, the butcher had come to the farm where we rented our house, to butcher a cow. I'd run into the house and covered my head with a pillow so I couldn't hear the gunshot. After Mom had assured me the cow had been shot, and was dead, I went out and watched the butcher skin and gut it out. When he drove away, the carcass was swinging from the rack in the back of his truck.

I twisted the last wire on my little fence repair job. No shots had been fired. I decided to drive down to the sheep camps and see what was going on. Maybe I could have a word with Junior.

Apparently, Domingo had raised such a ruckus with Junior that he had to hastily lay his rifle on the dashboard and retreat behind the steering wheel of his pickup.

A lively discussion was underway, on the two-way, between Junior, and his dad, Jack, when I arrived.

An inspection of the sheep followed, and we found no evidence of serious harm to them -- other than some white tufts of pulled wool.

In the end, Junior left Clover and Sassy chained under Domingo's sheep camp with strict orders to keep them tied. Then he tied Oscar, Rosy, and the black mutt on uncomfortably short tethers in the back of his pick-up, and drove away.

Domingo was heartbroken. Through angry tears he told me that when he's in the mountains with the sheep he's so lonely!"

"Si, si!" I said.

"Dogs my family! Oscar my friend!"

"I'm sorry," I said.

Domingo and Esteban shouted angry words in rancorous Spanish.

"I'm sorry," I repeated.

Their dark eyes flashed daggers.

I turned and walked away, feeling greatly saddened.

USS Constitution -- "Old Ironsides."

Boston
By Beaver

Friday morning a shuttle brought us from the hotel to meet the trolley for our city tour. Our route took us through the four lane Ted Williams Tunnel under Boston Harbor. The tunnel is part of the "big dig," that has been going on since 1991 to put major highways below ground in Boston. The project is five years past its planned completion, with a year's work left to do. Its estimated cost in 1990 was 2.6 billion dollars, and so far 14.6 billion dollars have been spent. Some parts of the underground highway are eight to ten lanes wide. A new fourteen-lane bridge crossing the Charles River is another part of the project. They think big in Boston, especially when using federal highway funds.

Our tour took us through the oldest part of Boston, where the streets are hilly, narrow, crooked, and run at odd angles. We saw the Paul Revere House, where our driver expounded at length about how Paul Revere had gotten himself captured by the British before reaching Concord, while William Dawes had made it all the way from Boston to Concord. He thought that William Dawes was the real hero of the night. He was no admirer of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, whose poem "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" made the wrong man famous, in his opinion.

We spent a little time at the old State House, the oldest surviving building in Boston, built in 1713. Nearby was the site of the Boston Massacre of 1770, where British soldiers fired into a group of hecklers, killing five men. On July 18, 1776, the newly written Declaration of Independence was read from the balcony of the old State House.

Not far from the old State House is the distinctive "new" State House, built in 1798. Originally its dome was covered with wooden shingles, but now it is covered with copper sheathed in sparkling 23-carat gold.

For me the high point of the tour was our stop at the USS Constitution, better known as "Old Ironsides." She is a graceful beauty, her masts with all their rigging towering above her dark hull. One wonders how anybody could keep track of how it all works when she is under sail. And sail she does, periodically taking a turn about Boston Harbor to keep her status as a commissioned ship of the US Navy.

The ship was built in the late 1700's, and became famous during the War of 1812. She was built of three layers of wood, with live oak in the center, making her hull so strong that no cannonball ever penetrated it. She has been restored to her original condition and armament as much as possible.

US Navy personnel operate the USS Constitution. They give informative tours, conveying how things were when the ship was an active frigate. Life on such a ship would not have been for the faint of heart.

The ship, only 204 feet long, was crewed by 450 men, including about 30 powder monkeys. They slept in hammocks below decks, crowded close together, despite the system whereby some slept in shifts while others were on duty. The food must have been less than wonderful, consisting of dried vegetables, meat preserved in salt, and hardtack bread. They mostly got soups and stews, prepared on a wood fired stove called a camboose.

There were cannons on the first two decks. The big muzzleloaders would recoil six feet when fired, restrained by thick ropes. After firing, they had to be reloaded and pushed back out to be ready to fire again. The main gun deck is scarcely six feet high, and would fill with black powder smoke so thick that one could barely see. Aiming was often accomplished by either waiting until the ship rolled down, to fire at the enemy ship's hull, or waiting for an upward roll, to fire at the sails and rigging.

Orphans as young as eight years old were employed as powder monkeys. Their job was to bring gunpowder, six pounds per trip, from the copper lined magazine deep in the hold, where it was unlikely to be hit by cannon fire. They had to climb up three ladders and cross the deck to the guns. The deck was soaked with water to prevent fires, making it difficult for them to maintain their footing while running back and forth on the slippery planking through the thick smoke.

Powder monkeys were paid $96 per year, which was saved for them. When they turned eighteen, they could leave the ship and collect their money, a small fortune in those times.

After our tour of Old Ironsides, D chose to relax on a bench and take in the view of the harbor while Jayce and I toured The USS Casin Young, a World War II era destroyer. We walked around the main deck, then rejoined D to spend a little time wandering through the Charleston Navy Yard and visiting the USS Constitution Museum. It's so much fun to actually touch something that one has only read about in history books! For me, this was the best part of our tour of Boston.

We hopped aboard the trolley again and rode to the Granary Cemetery, one of Boston's oldest cemeteries. Benjamin Franklin's parents, Paul Revere, John Hancock, and Samuel Adams are among those buried here. The first burials in the Granary Cemetery were in the 1660's.

When we tired of looking at old gravestones, we wandered off with no particular destination in mind. As luck would have it, we soon came to Boston Common, one of the oldest public parks in the country. The weather had turned quite sunny and warm, so lots of people were out enjoying themselves. Ice skaters swooped about on the Frog Pond, and Jayce immediately spotted a playground with lots of things to do. Grandma and Grandpa got to rest while he climbed up, slid down, and ran around to do it again.

D struck up a conversation with a nearby mom, and she directed us to a restaurant called Skipjack. The seafood was wonderful, but once again, the Minnesotans were a bit shocked by the price.

It had been a wonderful day, sunny, temperature above sixty, a bit windy, but pretty nice. We were tired out; we found our way a couple of blocks from the restaurant to the subway and headed for the hotel and a good night's sleep.

Jayce on trolley, left; Jayce poses as powder monkey, right.

Click here for a web gallery of photos of Jayce's trip to Boston.

Photo Editor's Note: Or you could just click on the Recipes link at the top and bottom of any Bulletin to get the menu of recipes collections and then click on Skinny Recipes and find the recipe you want. They are all posted on the web.

Hoping your eye treatment goes well and is totally successful, Larry!

Brenda and Nathan, I was happy to hear you are getting the home farmstead ... yet another family of children to be raised there! Neat!

And to all those who contributed ... I enjoyed every word! THANKS for sharing. Good job on our trip, Beaver. Thanks for writing it up!

Donna Anderson Johnson
Ashby, MN

I just want to say thanks again for another great Bulletin and all your work in faithfully sending that out each week.

What a wonderful issue full of travel last week ... loving the travels to China and everyone else who takes a trip and tells their story -- with pictures, too! And Ary in Netherlands sharing his life and how it is to work in a flower shop in Europe (and he says it is staying cool there too, did you notice?).

The Bulletin is just such fun to get each Saturday ... it truly is "good to the last Dot."

Have a good week of blessings.

Barb Dewey
Ashby, MN