First off Ski, Happy Birthday!  Happy Fiftieth Birthday!  Yes, my youngest brother, Frank, turns the big five-oh today, half a century.  Let’s see what it was like way back in 1960.  Let us all step into the way back machine together and remember some headlines from that long ago time:

• John F. Kennedy runs for President.  He got elected that November.
• U-2 pilot Gary Powers had just been shot down over Russia the USSR.
• Elvis Presley returns home from Germany and leaves the Army.
• Harper Lee releases her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.
• Penguin Books is not guilty of obscenity for Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

So things have changed in fifty years, now haven’t they?  Haven’t we all?  Frank resides these days n Sutter, California, in the Gold Country.  Frank and Kathy moved there several years ago.  Frank teaches chemistry at two different colleges and snowboards at Tahoe, in-between classes .

I call him Frank-ski and then he calls me Mark-ski.  Then the conversation usually degenerates into both of us saying, “I’m not Ski, you’re Ski.”  Frankly, no pun intended (Yah Right!), this has been going on so long I’ve forgotten how it all got started.  I think that it has something to do with our shared Polish heritage, many Polish last names end in Ski don’t you know.  Anyway Frank, we wish you a Happy Birthday!

Some readers might be wondering why brother Frank’s birthday gets this blog’s red carpet treatment, while closer family member’s birthdays are just footnoted.  The answer my friends is that Frank supplied this blog post’s photo content.  More accurately, Frank’s neighbor Charlie and his Bushnell motion activated camera supplied these three photos of their neighborhood’s kittys.  Needless to say, you don’t leave the house cat out at night.  Really it is the coyotes that you pets need to worry about.

The first picture was taken on February 8 and shows a mountain lion walking away from the camera at night.  The next two pictures were taken on March 19, first in the morning and then later that night.  The second picture is blurry, but you can make out the cat.  The third picture is golden.  It shows a Mountain Lioness with her cub in tow.  Look at their gaits.  Mom looks like she is just plodding along.  Youngster seems to be just bouncing along behind.  Isn’t that just the way that life goes?