The Celebration Singers performed “Everywhere I Go” at traditional services yesterday. It was wonderful.

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Egyptian blogger and student Abdelkareem Soliman was sentenced today to four years in prison for expressing views, opinions, and bravely “whistle blowing” of religious intolerance and human rights violations within his home country on his personal blog. According to the court documents, he was sentenced to “three years for contempting religion, and one year for defaming the president.”

Free and freedom-loving people everywhere should speak out and spread the word. For the latest information, and to find out what you can do, please go to:

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

-Pastor Martin Niemöller

Col. Dan E. Straight, a retired Air Force pilot and veteran of WWII, Korea, and Vietnam died yesterday. Col Straight was the Grand Marshall of 2005’s Longmont Veteran’s Day Parade.

I shot this photo above of Col. Straight in that parade. Dar’s dad, a Vietnam vet, was visiting us, so we pulled the kids out of school and took them downtown for the parade. It’s a shame to me that kids have to go to school on Vet’s day (mine never will!), when they should be out honoring vets.

And here’s a video I put together of the parade that year…

I never met Col. Straight, unfortunately, but he sounds like a very colorful man, involved in many local charities and causes. Our WWII vets are dying off at an alarming rate. Never pass up an opportunity to thank a Vet (of any war). There are heroes all around us.

Here’s today’s article on the passing of Col. Straight.

I just upgraded to WordPress 2.1! Considering the kind of code that goes into blogging software like this, it’s impressive when it all gets updated without a hitch. php, SQL, CSS… some of this stuff just makes my eyes cross. I was clearly not “born to code.” But I just followed the very explicit instructions provided from the fine folks at WordPress… and 20 minutes later, I’m updated.

This newest upgrade adds some features to the editor, autosave, upload manager, etc. Here’s the big list of new features.

I’m still blown away that this is a completely free application available to anyone with a hosting service. The Open Source community indeed does some amazing things. Linux… Open Office… WordPress…

Microsoft should be worried…very worried.

Did everyone happen to hear that a massive collective sigh emanate from downtown Longmont at about 5pm today?!

Yes indeed, the Browns are now down to just two mortgages! The Fox Hill house now belongs to Jodi and Lisa (bless them).

Clink! Cheers! And praise the Lord!

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OK, so at least it’s not a “Valentine’s Letter” like it was in year’s past. But we long since quit calling it a “Christmas Letter” for obvious reasons.

Click on the pic if you want to read about last year for The Browns and see what this year might hold…

I finally completed the video I made as a gift for a local WWII veteran. I shot it waaayy back in March ‘05, after meeting “my” veteran at a production I was doing for Dar’s Credit Union (he was one of the founding members). The man, Bill Herring, was in the storied Tenth Mountain Division, seeing combat as a rifleman, helping his Division break through the Wehrmacht’s Gothic Line in Italy, 1945.

Mr. Herring was a delight to interview, his memories still tack-sharp, providing vivid details from exactly 60 years prior to the interview. Along with 70 minutes or so of interview captured during one very long night of shooting, he provided me with several mementos from his scrapbook to photograph or scan to include in the piece… snapshots, newspaper clippings, drawings, postcards, even actual shrapnel pieces from German artillery. Regrettably, he never showed me his most-prized possession: a German Luger pistol, although I did scan the requisition papers for it.

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I finally let my old work domain expire (archtex.com). I was paying for the hosting, getting slammed with spam, and… I’m not really doing much of that kind of work anymore. There were a lot of “ch-ch-ch-ch-changes” that rolled down the pike of the Brown home last summer that made me back off of my part-time architecture gig. We moved into a new(er) house, I had to finish remodelling the old one, get it on the market, home-school my three kiddos… So now I’m trying to keep one less ball in the air.

So it’s a new year. A time to try out new things… like a blog. Let’s see if I can post something interesting with any regularity.